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Author Topic: DiGiCo D1 Screen  (Read 5536 times)

Nick Pires

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DiGiCo D1 Screen
« on: November 16, 2017, 10:43:50 AM »

This is a two part inquiry, the second of which will be in the marketplace.
We have a client who purchased a DiGiCo D1 from us several years ago. They have been very happy with it and it suits their needs. Recently, the master section display died. We are DiGiCo dealers so we priced out a replacement through the distributor, but the cost is approximately as much (maybe more) than the current value of the whole surface.
My question is: Does anyone know if there is a generic display that matches all the specs and connections of the original?
I'm curious if this same display was used in other (relatively inexpensive) products released around the same time.
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Robert Schoneman

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Re: DiGiCo D1 Screen
« Reply #1 on: November 19, 2017, 02:00:55 PM »

If you open it up there's likely a sticker on the back of the display telling you what it is. I know most of the current single-display SD consoles (11,9,8,10) use a Sharp display unit. Also, if you shine a flashlight on the display can you see an image? A lot of times the backlights just fail and sometimes you can find the parts and repair it yourself.

I can't tell you anything specific on the D1 but what you're looking for is called an open-frame display. They're common for industrial and embedded applications. Someone who builds custom control panels (machine controls and the like) would likely be able to get you what you need.

On DiGiCo desks the touchscreens are a resistive overlay and they talk directly to the engine - likely via I2C. I've never seen a DiGiCo console with any software touchscreen drivers so the coms protocol is going to be the most important thing presuming you can't separate the display from the overlay in which case you just need a display.
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Nick Pires

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Re: DiGiCo D1 Screen
« Reply #2 on: November 20, 2017, 09:16:19 AM »

If you open it up there's likely a sticker on the back of the display telling you what it is. I know most of the current single-display SD consoles (11,9,8,10) use a Sharp display unit. Also, if you shine a flashlight on the display can you see an image? A lot of times the backlights just fail and sometimes you can find the parts and repair it yourself.

I can't tell you anything specific on the D1 but what you're looking for is called an open-frame display. They're common for industrial and embedded applications. Someone who builds custom control panels (machine controls and the like) would likely be able to get you what you need.

On DiGiCo desks the touchscreens are a resistive overlay and they talk directly to the engine - likely via I2C. I've never seen a DiGiCo console with any software touchscreen drivers so the coms protocol is going to be the most important thing presuming you can't separate the display from the overlay in which case you just need a display.
Thanks for the reply. We found one for about 1/2 the price of "new" display. It is a refurb, but is officially supported by DiGiCo. Apparently the reason they are so expensive (an unused one costs $4500 for dealers) is two-fold. The first is that they are not in mass production anymore (at least not that we could find anywhere). The second, as you mentioned, is the comms protocol. You can't just drop in any touch screen that is the same size and has the same power/visual specs.
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TJ (Tom) Cornish

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Re: DiGiCo D1 Screen
« Reply #3 on: November 20, 2017, 09:44:45 AM »

(an unused one costs $4500 for dealers)
Just a little profit margin maybe?  Yikes!

My day job is in the finance industry (I'm not a finance guy directly, but have my ear to the wind), and situations where extreme amounts of money are paid for small things always catch my interest.  This situation is the epitome of a captive market - you pay what they make you pay, which has virtually no relationship to what the item actually costs.

I'll never play in the $$$,$$$ desk market so I don't claim to understand the elements that apparently make that expenditure worthwhile to those users, however things like this make it easy to see why even national acts are starting to question the value of the big stuff and carry something cheap and disposable like a couple X32s/SQs. 

Before someone calls me an idiot, yes, I understand that a 160 channel D1 and a 48 channel SQ6 are comparing dump trucks and bicycles, but the latest generation of 48x30 bicycles are starting to be able to handle a fair-sized show, and medium-sized systems like the DLive stretch the capability of budget-friendly systems to fairly significant scale.
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Scott Holtzman

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Re: DiGiCo D1 Screen
« Reply #4 on: November 20, 2017, 04:56:24 PM »

Just a little profit margin maybe?  Yikes!

My day job is in the finance industry (I'm not a finance guy directly, but have my ear to the wind), and situations where extreme amounts of money are paid for small things always catch my interest.  This situation is the epitome of a captive market - you pay what they make you pay, which has virtually no relationship to what the item actually costs.

I'll never play in the $$$,$$$ desk market so I don't claim to understand the elements that apparently make that expenditure worthwhile to those users, however things like this make it easy to see why even national acts are starting to question the value of the big stuff and carry something cheap and disposable like a couple X32s/SQs. 

Before someone calls me an idiot, yes, I understand that a 160 channel D1 and a 48 channel SQ6 are comparing dump trucks and bicycles, but the latest generation of 48x30 bicycles are starting to be able to handle a fair-sized show, and medium-sized systems like the DLive stretch the capability of budget-friendly systems to fairly significant scale.

Not counting the "super tours" I agree with you.  Right in your back yard a few weeks ago a keyboard player for a very well known jam band opened for an up and coming act.  He was on an x32 and the national got an SD-9.  The SD-9 rack pack is in the same ballpark as the dLive but it's 5 year old technology.

Regarding the original topic, if the touch interface separates the very first thing I would do is try and get the OEM part number.  I can't imagine any engineer specifying an odd display.

 
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Nick Pires

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Re: DiGiCo D1 Screen
« Reply #5 on: November 21, 2017, 10:45:48 AM »

Not counting the "super tours" I agree with you.  Right in your back yard a few weeks ago a keyboard player for a very well known jam band opened for an up and coming act.  He was on an x32 and the national got an SD-9.  The SD-9 rack pack is in the same ballpark as the dLive but it's 5 year old technology.

Regarding the original topic, if the touch interface separates the very first thing I would do is try and get the OEM part number.  I can't imagine any engineer specifying an odd display.
A few issues driving cost here are:
1) The D1 and D5 were EOL almost a decade ago. And the touch screens (some of the first ever in audio consoles) were designed almost 2 decades ago. I'm sure it was a fairly common type of touch screen in the early 2000s for devices running XP. Probably not so much anymore. Which leads to...
2) Supply and Demand. And yes, I'm sure DiGiCo is making a healthy profit on this part. To be fair to them, when we have needed parts for their current product line, they have been covered at no cost with no shipping charge or very affordable.
3) I'm sure DiGiCo wanted us/the client to do exactly what we did: weigh the cost of replacing the screen for a 15 year old console against purchasing a new S21.

On a side note, I would argue against the SD9 being 5 year old technology. With the Core 2 upgrade, I would put it up against anything else at it's price point.
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Ike Zimbel

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Re: DiGiCo D1 Screen
« Reply #6 on: November 21, 2017, 09:14:37 PM »

Quote
Just a little profit margin maybe?  Yikes!

My day job is in the finance industry (I'm not a finance guy directly, but have my ear to the wind), and situations where extreme amounts of money are paid for small things always catch my interest.  This situation is the epitome of a captive market - you pay what they make you pay, which has virtually no relationship to what the item actually costs.


I'll never play in the $$$,$$$ desk market so I don't claim to understand the elements that apparently make that expenditure worthwhile to those users, however things like this make it easy to see why even national acts are starting to question the value of the big stuff and carry something cheap and disposable like a couple X32s/SQs.



Not necessarily. I think a lot of people don't appreciate what a tiny industry we represent. I would guess that there might only have been, say, a thousand of these consoles ever made (if that). For a small company, sourcing, ordering and stocking something like that screen is a major expense. Keeping spares around for eventual failures is also a major expense and has to be weighed against using the stock to build new consoles. A 1000 piece order would be nothing compared to what a larger manufacturer would order.

On the X32 front: I worked a four day festival this summer (as RF Tech/Coordinator) with pro gear (I forget what the consoles were but they were Avids or better ). We had one act that was traveling with an X32 (or maybe it's predecessor...) and since I had time on my hands I helped with the WiFi and signal interfacing. That all worked fine and when the band was on, I went out front and had a listen. Well, the mix sounded fine for balances etc, but overall it just sounded...small...like the image was smaller than the actual line array (I'm struggling to describe this properly, but that one's pretty close).
I helped the BE pack up after their show and he told me that he knew it didn't sound like the big consoles but it was a necessary tool for him because the band's monitor mixes were so complex and it was easier for him to just store them and deal with it himself than try and get it dialed in on festival stages with a different ME for every show.

+1 to the suggestion that the back light may have failed and the screen is still ok, but sourcing another tube (and very possibly the supporting electronics) can be challenging. I replaced the tube in a Yamaha desk about a year ago (a DM2000, IIRC) and while the operation was successful, I had to tell the owner it was a one-time fix because so much of the plastic that held the tube in place just crumbled from age while I was working on it.
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TJ (Tom) Cornish

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Re: DiGiCo D1 Screen
« Reply #7 on: November 21, 2017, 10:00:49 PM »



I'll never play in the $$$,$$$ desk market so I don't claim to understand the elements that apparently make that expenditure worthwhile to those users, however things like this make it easy to see why even national acts are starting to question the value of the big stuff and carry something cheap and disposable like a couple X32s/SQs.



 Not necessarily. I think a lot of people don't appreciate what a tiny industry we represent. I would guess that there might only have been, say, a thousand of these consoles ever made (if that). For a small company, sourcing, ordering and stocking something like that screen is a major expense. Keeping spares around for eventual failures is also a major expense and has to be weighed against using the stock to build new consoles. A 1000 piece order would be nothing compared to what a larger manufacturer would order.

On the X32 front: I worked a four day festival this summer (as RF Tech/Coordinator) with pro gear (I forget what the consoles were but they were Avids or better ). We had one act that was traveling with an X32 (or maybe it's predecessor...) and since I had time on my hands I helped with the WiFi and signal interfacing. That all worked fine and when the band was on, I went out front and had a listen. Well, the mix sounded fine for balances etc, but overall it just sounded...small...like the image was smaller than the actual line array (I'm struggling to describe this properly, but that one's pretty close).
I helped the BE pack up after their show and he told me that he knew it didn't sound like the big consoles but it was a necessary tool for him because the band's monitor mixes were so complex and it was easier for him to just store them and deal with it himself than try and get it dialed in on festival stages with a different ME for every show.

+1 to the suggestion that the back light may have failed and the screen is still ok, but sourcing another tube (and very possibly the supporting electronics) can be challenging. I replaced the tube in a Yamaha desk about a year ago (a DM2000, IIRC) and while the operation was successful, I had to tell the owner it was a one-time fix because so much of the plastic that held the tube in place just crumbled from age while I was working on it.
I bet the number of D1s is more like 100 than 1000.

If the screen cost more than $1000 new I will eat my hat.  There's no doubt there's an inventory cost, but I struggle with $4500 for a screen.  To their credit, parts are available.  My beloved Korg OASYS keyboard I purchased in 2005 suffered a bump in transport and the heatsink clip broke off and when I next powered the keyboard up, shorted something out and damaged the system board.  Short of buying an entire keyboard, I'm stuck as there are no parts available.

RE the X32, I was more speaking of recognition of the true costs of the behemoth desks - purchase/rental price, maintenance, truck space, FOH seats lost, etc., and as time passes, it becomes harder to justify the big dog when the smaller desks are good enough; good enough implying at least some level of compromise.  FWIW, I suspect you wouldn't have had that feeling about lesser sound quality if the baby desk was an A&H GLD or the new SQ, or possibly the Soundcrafts.
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Tim McCulloch

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Re: DiGiCo D1 Screen
« Reply #8 on: November 21, 2017, 10:12:58 PM »

I bet the number of D1s is more like 100 than 1000.

If the screen cost more than $1000 new I will eat my hat.  There's no doubt there's an inventory cost, but I struggle with $4500 for a screen.  To their credit, parts are available.  My beloved Korg OASYS keyboard I purchased in 2005 suffered a bump in transport and the heatsink clip broke off and when I next powered the keyboard up, shorted something out and damaged the system board.  Short of buying an entire keyboard, I'm stuck as there are no parts available.

RE the X32, I was more speaking of recognition of the true costs of the behemoth desks - purchase/rental price, maintenance, truck space, FOH seats lost, etc., and as time passes, it becomes harder to justify the big dog when the smaller desks are good enough; good enough implying at least some level of compromise.  FWIW, I suspect you wouldn't have had that feeling about lesser sound quality if the baby desk was an A&H GLD or the new SQ, or possibly the Soundcrafts.

We've had a variety of X32-carrying acts through one of our venues and only 1 of them made me say "I hear the 'budget' in there."  That was Queensryche the last time around with Geoff Tate... great mix, sufficiently detailed that I could tell things were not audibly as they might be.

That said, a few weeks later and FOH had the headliner's DigiCo, our Avid Profile rig and an X32 for the first support.  The best sound out of the PA that night was from the X32...  Whether that was from operational choices by the mixerpersons or whatever was coming from the stage end of the snake I can't say as I wasn't mixing any of them.

Having parts sitting on the shelf incur costs every year - physical space, inventory/property taxes, insurance, administrative overhead; eventually the SKU gets EOL'd and the parts are sold for pennies on the dollar to an asset recovery firm.  Service parts prices have to reflect the risk of potential losses.
« Last Edit: November 21, 2017, 10:18:07 PM by Tim McCulloch »
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TJ (Tom) Cornish

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Re: DiGiCo D1 Screen
« Reply #9 on: November 22, 2017, 08:35:15 AM »

From another forum:

" I'm now hitting riders with my X32 at monitors, replacing a Heritage 3000 for shows under 32 channels. "

https://www.controlbooth.com/threads/another-reason-to-go-m32-rather-than-x32.42752/page-2#post-370895
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Tim McCulloch

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Re: DiGiCo D1 Screen
« Reply #10 on: November 22, 2017, 10:36:07 AM »

From another forum:

" I'm now hitting riders with my X32 at monitors, replacing a Heritage 3000 for shows under 32 channels. "

https://www.controlbooth.com/threads/another-reason-to-go-m32-rather-than-x32.42752/page-2#post-370895

Yeah, I read that over at CB.  Methinks there is some confusion as these desks are not interchangeable, but it's only a few more years before the *people* side of the analog interface age out of the business.

Previously told story:  12 years ago I'd get BEs who'd never used a digital mixer, now I get BEs who've never mixed a show on analog...
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TJ (Tom) Cornish

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Re: DiGiCo D1 Screen
« Reply #11 on: November 22, 2017, 01:15:49 PM »

Yeah, I read that over at CB.  Methinks there is some confusion as these desks are not interchangeable...
Taken at face value, they apparently are interchangeable for at least some shows.  Does the H3000 do more than an X32?  Yes.  Does the H3000 do less than the X32?  Yes - extra processing, IPad control, etc.

I have personally shoved aside a Heritage 2000 in favor of an M7, in part because of the "mostly working" state of the board in question, which is fairly typical of large analog boards. 

I am not a Digico expert, but it's my recollection that the early Digicos were famous for unreliability.  It is still common that larger boards come with 2 power supplies, based on the history that at one time power supply failure was likely. 

You can love or hate the direction of the world, but it's hard to fight commoditization of everything.  By all evidence I've seen, the cheap boards are as reliable as the big dogs, and you can bet a replacement screen for an X32 costs a whole lot less than $4500.
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Tim McCulloch

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Re: DiGiCo D1 Screen
« Reply #12 on: November 22, 2017, 02:54:34 PM »

Taken at face value, they apparently are interchangeable for at least some shows.  Does the H3000 do more than an X32?  Yes.  Does the H3000 do less than the X32?  Yes - extra processing, IPad control, etc.

I have personally shoved aside a Heritage 2000 in favor of an M7, in part because of the "mostly working" state of the board in question, which is fairly typical of large analog boards. 

I am not a Digico expert, but it's my recollection that the early Digicos were famous for unreliability.  It is still common that larger boards come with 2 power supplies, based on the history that at one time power supply failure was likely. 

You can love or hate the direction of the world, but it's hard to fight commoditization of everything.  By all evidence I've seen, the cheap boards are as reliable as the big dogs, and you can bet a replacement screen for an X32 costs a whole lot less than $4500.

For some users the consoles are not interchangeable in spite of what you & I both think. ;)  That's why I mentioned the human side of the UI...

From a working perspective I don't miss the barge-size analog consoles; that bit of nostalgia disappears when my back pain visits.

I just did a show with an act that insists on analog and frankly didn't hear anything that made it better or worse, the consideration was the BE's preference and as I said, we graybeards are close to retirement.

I think the X32 replacement screen is <$150.

The comments about how old the D1 is and the cost/SOTA back when it was build are correct.  We've benefited tremendously from improvements in design and production of touch screens and the costs have dropped a Whole Lot.  DigiCo does not benefit from having old, expensive technology on the self and costing them every year to keep in inventory.  Likewise, with the model a legacy item there's no money in making a new interface to use a newer screen.  The clock hands are turning to "disposable" much faster than I'd like...

We're largely on the same page here, TJ...
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Re: DiGiCo D1 Screen
« Reply #12 on: November 22, 2017, 02:54:34 PM »


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