Digital Mixer and Gigs

[Boodang]

2 hours ago, skidder652003 said:

All good points folks.

I will say that the tactile control of hardware (ie sliders and knobs) on the Livetrack has been super useful for us as we don't have a soundman and our drummer puts the console by the side of his kit.

This is useful for quick adjustments to the sound once we get going if necessary, ie more vocal in the monitor, less guitar out front (the usual).

We do a sound check out front with the ipad (singer does this) but theres always usually a reason to adjust once we start and the zoom does this nice and quick.

We found faffing on a tablet midway through a gig was a bit of a pain/stressful.

Luckily we are all apple fans so no issues with the ipad but it is daft that they haven't incorporated Android.

I do this when I’m playing drums and have the laptop controlling the xr18 at my side. Trouble is, when it was an analogue desk I could adjust the sliders using a drum stick but that’s not possible now, unless I had sticks with capacitive tips!

[Woodinblack]

11 minutes ago, Boodang said:

I do this when I’m playing drums and have the laptop controlling the xr18 at my side. Trouble is, when it was an analogue desk I could adjust the sliders using a drum stick but that’s not possible now, unless I had sticks with capacitive tips!

 

Thats what the X-Touch is for!

[Boodang]

1 minute ago, Woodinblack said:

 

Thats what the X-Control is for!

Good shout, I can go back to mixing with drumsticks then. 

[Woodinblack]

 

 

[tauzero]

On 01/08/2023 at 14:21, Happy Jack said:

It's a shame because @Silvia Bluejay and I have a LOT of Zoom kit and we really rate their stuff, so it's really silly of them to turn iOS into a ghetto for this product.

 

For some reason, Zoom refuse to countenance Android apps - started with the MS-100BT, which allowed you to load effects via Bluetooth but only from iThings. I don't understand why they turn their backs on 75% of the market.

[Woodinblack]

8 hours ago, tauzero said:

 

For some reason, Zoom refuse to countenance Android apps - started with the MS-100BT, which allowed you to load effects via Bluetooth but only from iThings. I don't understand why they turn their backs on 75% of the market.

 

Its not 75% though, if it was, it would make no sense at all. Overall it is just over 50% but in the markets that matter to zoom it is a lot higher (japan 65%-us 55%). From a resources PoV it makes sense, write once for iOS, write once, modify 20 times for various androids - when they give so little effort to the apps that control them its not that tricky of a decision and it doesn't appear to upset their sales. It makes much more sense on a music app, but not really as much on something like loading effects or managing a device - its just as easy to do on android and it doesn't have to be that specific.

[BigRedX]

Zoom are weird though. They don't even include MIDI on many of the multi-effects units.

[tauzero]

1 hour ago, Woodinblack said:

Its not 75% though, if it was, it would make no sense at all. Overall it is just over 50% but in the markets that matter to zoom it is a lot higher (japan 65%-us 55%). From a resources PoV it makes sense, write once for iOS, write once, modify 20 times for various androids - when they give so little effort to the apps that control them its not that tricky of a decision and it doesn't appear to upset their sales. It makes much more sense on a music app, but not really as much on something like loading effects or managing a device - its just as easy to do on android and it doesn't have to be that specific.

 

72% globally: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272698/global-market-share-held-by-mobile-operating-systems-since-2009/ - the ratio between Android and iOS rather than the absolute values. It's around 50/50 in the UK. Once a UI and workflow is developed on iOS, a large part of the work has been done. Yes, you're using resources to port the software, but where it's file management and Bluetooth control like the MS-100BT was, most of that will be standard APIs - I would assume a layer of hardware abstraction for the Bluetooth aspect. Compared to the resources to develop the device in the first place, that's not going to be a massive extra amount. And it must upset their sales - after all, I didn't buy an MS-100BT because of the iOS dependency, so that's at least one sale they lost.

[Woodinblack]

16 minutes ago, tauzero said:

72% globally: https://www.statista.com/statistics/272698/global-market-share-held-by-mobile-operating-systems-since-2009/ - the ratio between Android and iOS rather than the absolute values.

 

Thats all androids. If you then take the values between the last few iOs versions and the last few android versions, the market share is very different and the iOS figures are ahead. On the same site it has market share on android https://www.statista.com/statistics/271774/share-of-android-platforms-on-mobile-devices-with-android-os/

 

and also note that most of these devices are being used on tablets complicates matters much more:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/273840/global-market-share-of-tablet-operating-systems-since-2010/

 

If you are writing a current app and don't want to have to write against an old SDK to cope with the old systems, the iOS route is easy. Yes, i have some old android devices round here with > 5 year old OSs on them, but all my iOS devices are pretty well up to date (or within one system version).  As some of the posts round here say:

On 01/08/2023 at 14:46, Dad3353 said:

 I also have (I don't know why, nor where it came from...) a 'tablet' thingy, which has a bigger screen. If we were to invest in a mixer of the sort described in this topic, it would have to be usable with these

 

So that is probably some old underpowered android tablet that will make your product look quite poor while preventing your writing for whatever the latest samsung or whatever is - where is the incentive for a developer to develop for that?

 

[tauzero]

6 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

 

Thats all androids. If you then take the values between the last few iOs versions and the last few android versions, the market share is very different and the iOS figures are ahead. On the same site it has market share on android https://www.statista.com/statistics/271774/share-of-android-platforms-on-mobile-devices-with-android-os/

 

and also note that most of these devices are being used on tablets complicates matters much more:

https://www.statista.com/statistics/273840/global-market-share-of-tablet-operating-systems-since-2010/

 

If you are writing a current app and don't want to have to write against an old SDK to cope with the old systems, the iOS route is easy. Yes, i have some old android devices round here with > 5 year old OSs on them, but all my iOS devices are pretty well up to date (or within one system version).  As some of the posts round here say:

 

So that is probably some old underpowered android tablet that will make your product look quite poor while preventing your writing for whatever the latest samsung or whatever is - where is the incentive for a developer to develop for that?

 

 

Just restrict it to the last four versions of Android. After all, does anyone still include the IE6 workrounds on their web pages? I haven't developed for Android or iOS but I assume that the classes won't vary much from version to version, as there need to be backwards compatibility. My old underpowered Android tablet happily runs X-Air and is perfectly responsive - after all, it's only screen handling and sending and receiving relatively simple information over wifi, not processing audio. In the case of the MS-100BT, it should be even simpler (file manager and Bluetooth control) but I'll never know as I'm not buying an iOS device simply to control a now obsolete device. It might be worth reflecting on the fact that it is obsolete whereas the MS-50G, MS-60B, and MS-70CDR are all still alive and kicking. Could it be because Zoom only catered for iOS users and thus cut their potential sales in half (maybe even worse, as Android users may be more drawn to budget devices than iOS users)?

[Dad3353]

38 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

...So that is probably some old underpowered android tablet that will make your product look quite poor while preventing your writing for whatever the latest samsung or whatever is - where is the incentive for a developer to develop for that?

 

Tread carefully; you're addressing an ancien developer..! If one may only develop for next week's shiny gadget, one's product has a very short shelf-life. This, of course, makes sense for some folk (read 'industries'...), but some prefer keeping stuff going for a bit longer than the attention span of a ten-year old with too much pocket money. I always preferred stability over uber-powerful cutting edge, and had a healthy career in many IT roles. 

 

(It is, however, a crap 'tablet', I'll allow ; goodness knows with what delivery of mail-ordered slippers it came as a 'free gift', but I found it under a pile of old stuff carefully put aside by my late wife, many years ago. It turns on, and I found how to take a photo or video with it, then turned it off and put it away again. I wouldn't use it to handle the sound or lights to our cottage, let alone a concert. I have laptops for that, all PC OS stuff...).

Edited August 3, 2023 by Dad3353

[Woodinblack]

12 minutes ago, Dad3353 said:

Tread carefully; you're addressing an ancien developer..! If one may only develop for next week's shiny gadget, one's product has a very short shelf-life.

 

That is litterally the market here.

 

But more the point is that my gigging iPad has a release date of Oct 2014, and has the latest but one operating system on it, so it runs pretty well anything, it runs the tablet controllers and it also used to run my synths (it obviously still could by I do it differently now). It is actually an art form to stop the iPad from updating to the latest system. I am not looking to replace it any time soon, and if I do it will probably just because it gets broken by some drunk guy at a gig falling on my microphone stand. If you look at the android OS distribution, they are less commonly upgraded.

[Woodinblack]

30 minutes ago, tauzero said:

Could it be because Zoom only catered for iOS users and thus cut their potential sales in half (maybe even worse, as Android users may be more drawn to budget devices than iOS users)?

 

I am not sure there anything to prove that. I prefer budget stuff, I just don't do android (although I do program for it sometimes)

[tauzero]

2 hours ago, Woodinblack said:

But more the point is that my gigging iPad has a release date of Oct 2014, and has the latest but one operating system on it, so it runs pretty well anything, it runs the tablet controllers and it also used to run my synths (it obviously still could by I do it differently now). It is actually an art form to stop the iPad from updating to the latest system. I am not looking to replace it any time soon, and if I do it will probably just because it gets broken by some drunk guy at a gig falling on my microphone stand. If you look at the android OS distribution, they are less commonly upgraded.

 

As an experiment, I just got my old Nexus 5 out of the drawer where it's been since about 2015 and loaded X Air onto it. ICBA to get the XR12 out to check that aspect, but the app loads and runs. Android 6 rather than Android 13, which is on my Pixel 6 Pro which also happily runs X Air. I suspect that most of the time a new Android version will simply mean recompiling the APK and uploading it to Google Play, unless some fab new feature comes along that a developer would like to make use of.

 

I think Zoom are very much the exception - I can't think of anyone else that produces control software exclusively for iOS. I have a feeling that Mackie once did, but they've got control software for Win, Mac, Android, and iOS now. So all their competition thinks there's a case to be made for Android versions.

[Happy Jack]

 

[Happy Jack]

@Silvia Bluejay

 

PA Forum please.

 

[Chienmortbb]

On 01/08/2023 at 14:21, Happy Jack said:

 

It has taken me FAR longer than it should have to realise that the LiveTrak series will work only with iOS. 

 

Me and my bands are totally Androided ... there's no way we're going to move over to ruddy Apple just so we can buy a particular mixer. 

 

It's a shame because @Silvia Bluejay and I have a LOT of Zoom kit and we really rate their stuff, so it's really silly of them to turn iOS into a ghetto for this product.

 

OSX and iOS have always been the choice in Professional Audio. While I can see the point of that at the high end, it does limit the market at the for the weekend warriors. In the computer world, I was always a die hard Windows fanboi , until I had to use Macs for Audio/Video work. The ease of use and reliability of OSX was a revelation.

 

By the time the 16-year-old MacBook died, I was retired and a little strapped for cash, so bought a mid-range Dell. It went back several times and had numerous issues that meant Windows had to be re-installed. The fact that the hardware and software are from the same vendor does mean less variation and fewer chances of incompatibility. That does help third parties like Zoom, from a support point of view.

 

However, the lack of an app was the reason I bought the Soundcraft Ui16 with its browser control interface. It meant that any device and OS version would work without installing more software onto the device. I have tried the Mixing Station but found it to be a jack of all trades, master of none. However, I can see the benefit when a freelance sound tech moves from console to console on a daily basis.

 

In my band, we use a Gen 3 iPad (10 years old?) and various different phones and computers and apart from the usual networking issues* in the early days, it has been fine.

 

Networking issues to do with the inbuilt routers seem to be an issue in most compact digital desks. The Behringer I used to have was the worst, but then it was another member of that particular band that owned it, so I could not take the time to investigate fully.

 

@Phil Starr has an ECF M18 mixer and says the Wi-Fi is rock solid, but I have heard both Soundcraft and Behringer uses of many years say the same.

[Happy Jack]

I've heard from loads of people that the in-built wi-fi on whatever they've just paid for works great, and I've seen ever so many YouTube reviews where the reviewer from some big dealer chain doesn't actually say that the in-built wi-fi is complete bovine manure.

 

But it is. It always is. 

 

I have no difficulty believing that the on-board wi-fi works fine if you're gigging in The Brecon Beacons or a remote valley in Utah. If your gigs are all in London and the Home Counties (as mine are) then you really really don't want to be relying on the in-built wi-fi. Don't ask me how I know.

 

[Woodinblack]

I have had a X18 for many many years now and done hundreds of gigs on it. I use the inbuilt wifi for practices and have no issue with it there. I used to use it for gigs, and had no issues for many gigs with it until one large outdoor gig when it just became completely unusable, like you couldn't adjust anything and the mixer was just frozen. every minute or so it would sort of work, but luckily have been setup it was fine for what we were doing - if I had had to adjust anything i wouldn't have been able to. 

Since that I never relied on it and always used an external router, but of recent years, that has become less of an issue as I also have a X-Control desk which I use for normal operations, which is ethernet, so that and the X18 are connected to a router by ethernet and the iPad is by wifi - 5GHz wifi and obviously no issues.

So even if I got the most stable built in wifi from some device, I would still need ethernet from the router for the X-Control (unless I ran that off another wireless router) so it wouldn't help me. For me the built in wifi is handy so I don't have to take much to practices, but not something I want to use live.

[dave_bass5]

I will only use my external router at gigs, but i also keep a USB Ethernet adapter handy in case the router stops working. I feel safe with a hardwired back up, should i need it, but for my band we could get buy without any type of controller once we have sound checked. For decades ive gigged without a sound engineer and a static mix, so it’s no big deal if we lose connection for a set. 

At home i use my XR18 as my computer interface now (the perks of working it outright), but i don't even bother with a controller for it. The input levels work for DAW as well as live. I like that this doesn’t necessarily need a connecting app or controller for this use. In

Edited September 3, 2023 by dave_bass5

[Woodinblack]

4 minutes ago, dave_bass5 said:

but i don't even bother with a contour for it. 

 

A contour?

[dave_bass5]

11 minutes ago, Woodinblack said:

 

A contour?

Sorry, ‘controller’ 😎

[lemmywinks]

We had serious dropout issues using the inbuilt router at a particularly busy studio and just use an external 5ghz router for all occasions now, our XR18 is all prewired in a shallow 3u rack bag so it's plug and play.

[Chienmortbb]

20 hours ago, lemmywinks said:

We had serious dropout issues using the inbuilt router at a particularly busy studio and just use an external 5ghz router for all occasions now, our XR18 is all prewired in a shallow 3u rack bag so it's plug and play.

As I have  said before, I can use the external router with my Soundcraft Ui16 but I also have an adapter that allows wired Ethernet connection from m6 iPad. So I can wander and set up using WiFi but use a wired connection on the stage. 
 

The UI’s control is via a web browser so it is app and operating system Independant. On your basic issue, I would never do a gig with the internal router and I would not use a Behringer/Midas wireless for the same reason. I have lost control of both Soundcraft and Behringer at rehearsal and his respectively.

 

I do have 2021 models of iPad and Android tables plus an Android Tablet at least 7 years old and a Gen 3 iPad, 10 years old. I could do a report on all these and how well they perform if there is any interest. 

 

 

 

 

[lemmywinks]

8 hours ago, Chienmortbb said:

As I have  said before, I can use the external router with my Soundcraft Ui16 but I also have an adapter that allows wired Ethernet connection from m6 iPad. So I can wander and set up using WiFi but use a wired connection on the stage. 
 

The UI’s control is via a web browser so it is app and operating system Independant. On your basic issue, I would never do a gig with the internal router and I would not use a Behringer/Midas wireless for the same reason. I have lost control of both Soundcraft and Behringer at rehearsal and his respectively.

 

I do have 2021 models of iPad and Android tables plus an Android Tablet at least 7 years old and a Gen 3 iPad, 10 years old. I could do a report on all these and how well they perform if there is any interest. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Our main mix tablet is a 12.5" WIndows 10 convertible so we can run the full X-Air PC app, for my monitor mix I use an original Surface Go mainly so I can be lazy and have the same interface.

 

Previously I ran it on Atom Bay Trail devices with just 2gb ram and it was fast enough, the PC software will run on just about anything.