VCA Groups

[dawman]

What are these..? Sequoia 12 has them and everyone is raving about them, since I was playing pinball games in every major dtudio I recorded in as a kid, I missed some invaluable lessons, but I guess it's never too late......
Does Scope have these....?

[the19thbear]

its kinda like an aux that you feed with a buss.
If you have a vca control, you can assign, say all the drums to vca channel 1, and if you move vca 1, ALL the faders on vca channel 1 will move, If not physically, then "under the hood".
the difference between an aux send and vca groups could be this:
Say have 8 tracks with a drumkit layered out. You have track 2 (the snare) with a reverb send post fader on it. If you have the aux configuration, and you turn up the fader for the aux/bus, the send will remain whatever it was (you would have loud drums with lower reverb).

If you had the VCA configuration, and turned up the "master" VCA the faders would move and you would turn up the drums AND the amount of signal feeding from the snare reverb send.
AUX: Loud drums, low reverb send volume
VCA: Loud drums, loud reverb send volume.
Makes sense?
And yes, the scope mixers can do it... its in the manual somewhere.

(I actually should always be using VCA instead of aux..but never do because of laziness )

[dawman]

Does the STM 2448 X have this capability...?

[garyb]

sure! there are the record groups and there are also fader groups. the fader groups can be assigned at the bottom of the channels strip, there are click and drag numbers. just set each channel you want linked to the same number.

this is a feature that EVERY automated mixer has, or every serious one, anyway...i love how marketing can take something basic and make it amazing!

[siriusbliss]

I've used the VCA setup in the the 4896 a while ago so that I could manually manipulate my whole multi-channel guitar rig deal by using just one fader on a little Korg Nanokontrol, but soon found that I preferred the VCAs in Sequoia because then you can record the automation of fader controls in Sequoia easier than in Scope.

Using an aux channel only let's you weave in whatever is on your aux rather than control a whole bus of channels.

But for live performance you should be able to use one of the STMs.

Greg

[garyb]

midi works well for automation too. automating in the sequencer is certainly easier, and i usually do automate in the sequencer.

[dawman]

I already do, but I always get confused when people talk about a digital device and use analog terms.
These should be called DCA groups, but I understand that using analog terms and cool pictures of old tubes lighting up and consoles is the gig.
SpaceF's mixers are even more intricate the more I study them.
I think this is good for live if I were to be micing the drums in Scope, and vocals etc.
I should have learned of this before when I was agent/performer/boss/soundman/ crazed alchoholic.
That's why I quit. Had the best sounding band and players too, but it was like a group of whiny beotches always changing their volumes, then expecting me to recorrect their settings, and of course the vocalist wants more reverb, more money, sing less, etc.
Maybe it's good I don't know this stuff.....

Thanks for the explantions though...

[jksuperstar]

Yes, spacef has complete banks of VCAs (gates) with built-in selection of sidechain source, LFOs, envelopes, etc. Really powerful stuff. 12 channels at a time

[dawman]

I knew I bought these for a reason. I will be doing some scoring and some automated stuff so I read up on how an Orchestral template using these for mastering would be helful, I think SpaceF's explanation with the French Touch stuff was really interesting too.
If you have time would you show me how you use this, which mixers and why, and then an explanation of their routing....when you have time.
When I get the oppurtunity to spend I often buy stuff I am not even sure if I would need, I knew I wanted the Stem 247 and MB7, but the rest of these mixers are pretty advanced so I want to see if I can make use of them. There's so many...

Thanks....

[jksuperstar]

No problem, but I won't be back in the studio for a few days.