Open To Everyone
When Neyrinck upgraded their Ney-Fi system with V-Control Pro 2, they opened up their wonderful control system to anyone with a web browser, and even better anyone with a touch screen device, completely operating system agnostic. They also introduced the V-Panner app, which you can use to control the surround panners on your Pro Tools HD system.
A Great Move
Modern day mobile touch screen devices also come with a host of other sensors, that can feed back all sorts of information, from gyroscopic movement sensors and even compasses built in to the device. They're also equipped with the wireless comms to send this data back to your DAW. So it made perfect sense to Neyrinck to take full advantage of all this data.
As Neyrinck's video shows this brilliant feature on an iPhone, which runs their native iOS app, I thought I'd show you it in action on Android, which is quickly overtaking iOS as the most popular mobile operating system. I have a Sony Xperia Z3 Compact smartphone, running Android 5. It's reasonably high spec, but certainly not the best Android device available.
Set Centre, And Send
Once you've set up the app and connected it to your V-Control host over Wifi, you first have to tell your device which way is forward, by pressing "Set Center" while you're pointing the device at the Centre loudspeaker.
Once you've done this, you simply select which channel you wish to control using the left and right arrows, and press "Send", which makes the pointer on the green pan grid turn red.
V-Panner then tracks which way you're pointing your device and adjusts the panner accordingly.
Initial Setup
There are somethings you need to do first with V-Panner, V-Control and Pro Tools before you can use V-Panner.
The most important thing, and an option that curiously isn't on the iOS native app version, is the ability to manually enter the IP address of the host. It's a lot more reliable than letting the app seek out the V-Control host by itself.
Once you've done that, you then need to go to V-Control and check that your device is showing up. On Windows 10 you get a cheery notification that it has connected.
Then you need to go to Pro Tools > Setup > Peripherals > Midi Controllers (see below) and set up two of the HUI channels to receive the dual panners from V-Panner.
The great thing about this is that you can have separate devices for V-Console and V-Panner.
Watch my video to see how I got on....
To say I'm impressed is a total under-statement. Absolutely brilliant!
The potential for this is incredible - ANY touch screen device with motion sensors can use this (caveat - only been tested so far on the most popular Android devices), but in principle you could extend this to smart watches, other body worn devices, and even control sound beyond the X/Y plane and do height / 3D panning as well. Imagine being able to just point at where you want the sound to come from.
The only issue I've found is that if you move the panner on your Pro Tools, or indeed any other information, the pan information isn't fed back to V-Panner. This might be because it's in its early days, but it would be handy to have.
Finally, post production sound is catching up with gaming. Well done Neyrinck!