Remember when phones were attached to the wall? If you wanted to make a call, you couldn’t just reach in your back pocket and pull out your iPhone or Android. Now you can text, take pictures, pay for items, read news feeds, and scroll through dozens of apps from wherever you’re standing at the moment – providing you have cell phone service, of course. Something similar happened to consoles because of AoIP. If it’s been a while since you were in the market for a new console, here’s what you need to know.
So much has changed on the surface. You’ll find fader wedges networked together for shared workflows, touchscreens that look like a mixer on a laptop, and small turrets set on desks or in racks. And the biggest thing trending?
Touchscreens that look more like an iPhone than a broadcast console, thanks to programmable AoIP console surfaces such such as our LXE and screen development tools like our ScreenBuilder app. When asked in a Radio World interview about console trends, our Tech Support Engineer John Davis, who commissions dozens of studios a year, commented: “Most of the studios I walk into these days have a lot of different variations of what was once served by the traditional console as many of us remember it.” Even what we’d consider to be a console by traditional standards is hardly a regular old console anymore. For example, our LXE console surface has full-color OLED screens for displaying relevant details associated with each console control.
Those same console controls are also programmable for individualizing settings by show, station or talent, and setting EQ, routing, and salvos can be made easily from a touchscreen, making these consoles almost as dynamically changeable as any virtual mixer.
If you haven’t shopped for a console in a while, know this: a console can be precisely what you need it to be, whether that’s a large mixing desk for television news like our Arcus, a small talent station like our TS-4, or a remote mixer on a tablet like our ReMIX—or a combination of the above.
Not only are there more choices, there are infinitely more ways to use console interfaces today. For example, our Glass LXE virtual mixer can be used in collaboration with a physical LXE counterpart, right down to the fader on one tracking to the fader on the other. Or, that same Glass LXE touchscreen can be used exclusively as a cost-effective alternative to a fixed console. At the other end of the spectrum, a fixed LXE console surface can also include an optional VoxPro edit wheel for a fully integrated mixing, routing, and live editing experience, not to mention be customized for just about any other purpose imaginable because of its soft controls.
Even our newer analog and digital consoles (AML and DML consoles) are heavily influenced by AoIP. They’re compact, efficiently engineered and include features like RJ45 connectors for low-cost wiring and USB/Bluetooth connectivity for direct-to-fader input from players, phones, and other external devices. In many cases, modernizing an existing studio can be as easy as swapping out an old analog board with a new AML console or adding a digital DML console, which even has an optional WheatNet IP app that lets you output to a WheatNet IP audio network as part of a larger studio environment. There’s no longer a hard line between digital, analog and AoIP, and that means more choices and better budgeting for you.
THE NEW MATH OF STUDIO PLANNING
Finally, no discussion on consoles is complete without a brief mention of how the console surface factors into studios these days.
It wasn’t that long ago when just about everything you needed to do in the studio was done manually from the controls and faders on the console. Now, a lot of that is automated in the background through the AoIP system. There are hundreds of background logic and routing routines going on behind that console – like, panning a studio camera to the guest whose fader is up and a mic is live or “automagically” getting the right return feed to the codec during a remote. You can literally sit in front of any WheatNet IP console surface we make and pull up a codec, and the right mix-minus will automatically and magically be routed to the right feed.
“The number of studios needed today is largely determined by how many live shows and events happen at one time, not by the number of sources and signals needed as was the determining factor before. What that means is that instead of a studio for every station, you can now have one main studio for every two or three stations and a smaller “budget” studio that serves multiple purposes,” commented John.
Put another way: whatever you decide on for your new console surface – fixed, touchscreen or a combination of both – you’ll be able to do so much more with it than any console of yore.
Company
600 Industrial Dr.
New Bern, NC 28562 USA
Main office +1 (252) 638-7000
Fax main office +1 (252) 637-1285
We are open Monday through Friday,
8:30 AM to 8:30 PM EST
Company
600 Industrial Dr.
New Bern, NC 28562 USA
Main office +1 (252) 638-7000
Fax main office +1 (252) 637-1285
We are open Monday through Friday,
9:00 AM to 5:30 PM EST
