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[Dave Bednarski]

Until touch screens can emulate that feedback, which is still quite a few years out, physical buttons will still reign supreme.

They solved that with the first iPhone!  Behold... http://4iconcepts.com/invisible-keypad

I actually bought them years ago - they made an excellent pocket lint trap!

[Russ Davis]

I'm surely repeating myself, VR goggles or perhaps the newer google glass, with facial recognition software so you can just point to a muso, and squeeze his head for compression. 

Fast-forward a few more years: Holograms, so we can reach out and smack the 'talent' cupping whatever serves as a mic in the future.

[Jason Lucas]

While mixing on a touch screen is technically possible today, the problem lies in the feedback of using the touch screen.  With a regular console, you can place your hands in position and move faders without having to look.  You can tell if your hand slips off of fader position and is now controlling the wrong fader.  Not so with a touch screen.

Until touch screens can emulate that feedback, which is still quite a few years out, physical buttons will still reign supreme.

Agreed.

[Mark McFarlane]

...
I wonder what giving the singer the finger would do!

That would engage Autotune on the singers mic.

[John Roberts {JR}]

Stephen St Croix wrote about using V.R. Goggles and V.R. gloves to mix, at least 10 years ago!

He did not write about squeezing his head for compression, LOL! That's genius!
I wonder what giving the singer the finger would do!

I've been writing about some of these concepts for a pretty long time... even wrote up some interesting PAs (product authorizations back at my old day job, that never went anywhere waiting for technology to catch up).

I think google glass kind of puts this in play again, but we need some major paradigm shifts regarding mixing to make this effective. The computer brain connected to the glasses could learn to recognize where the stage is and even who the talent are using machine vision. A new vocabulary of hand-finger gestures visible in the glass's field of view would need to be developed, and as I have alternately suggested before perhaps a results targeted approach to mixing, instead of literal iterative control tweaking could be more productive. We are just scraping the surface of how computers could help us, with products like feedback killers, but we are still thinking about linearly twiddling knobs, not setting envelopes or maps for (sonic) results. 

or not...

JR
 

[Brian Jojade]

They solved that with the first iPhone!  Behold... http://4iconcepts.com/invisible-keypad

I actually bought them years ago - they made an excellent pocket lint trap!

That's all well and good until the screen layout changes.

Actually, technology that's being worked on now will actually be able to physically change the screen surface.  Adding bumps or changing the texture.  This also allows tactile feedback to let you know you've actually hit the button, instead of just having it show on the screen. Once that's perfected, physical controls will be less necessary.  Until that happens, give me a physical control surface over virtual any day.

[Ned Ward]

has anyone bought/tried the Leap Motion? Don't think it would work for Live sound yet, but seems interesting enough at $80.

https://www.leapmotion.com/

[Scott Bolt]

I've been writing about some of these concepts for a pretty long time... even wrote up some interesting PAs (product authorizations back at my old day job, that never went anywhere waiting for technology to catch up).

I think google glass kind of puts this in play again, but we need some major paradigm shifts regarding mixing to make this effective. The computer brain connected to the glasses could learn to recognize where the stage is and even who the talent are using machine vision. A new vocabulary of hand-finger gestures visible in the glass's field of view would need to be developed, and as I have alternately suggested before perhaps a results targeted approach to mixing, instead of literal iterative control tweaking could be more productive. We are just scraping the surface of how computers could help us, with products like feedback killers, but we are still thinking about linearly twiddling knobs, not setting envelopes or maps for (sonic) results. 

or not...

JR

JR,

I agree that this is most surely how things will go.  I think for the next few years what we are going to see is that digital desks will continue to replace analog desks at production FOH rigs, but the best of these desks will continue to have plenty of physical faders and encoders.

The majority of small time operators will likely go to something like the X32 Rack, or DL1608 (including weekend warrior bands) with little or no physical interface on the mixer itself.

In the more distant future (say 10 years?) I think even the big production rigs will end up with a virtual interface with many of the features you describe.  This kind of interface may well be used for much more than just mixing pro audio in the future.

I like the way you think

[Per Sovik]

Until touch screens can emulate that feedback, which is still quite a few years out, physical buttons will still reign supreme.

Second generation neural interfaces are known to be able to do virtual tactile feedback

[Jonathan Johnson]

If we're bashing a brand based on a rather tiny reported field failure rate, I can start with ...

We *were* a 100% ... shop until we had repeated, catastrophic failures (mostly PSU related).  I don't think I'd celebrated any event in my life like the day we sold the last ... after the PSU released the magic smoke.

We became a 100% Yamaha shop that day, and have yet to experience a Yammy analog console failure...

FWIW, I've seen a Yamaha console fail. Specifically, an MG166CX analog console. After professional diagnosis, we determined that the cost of repair would nearly match if not exceed the value of the unit. Admittedly, it's lower-end unit, but it did fail.

We replaced it with another Yamaha unit.

[ProSoundWeb Community]