The Experts team wondered what we thought people would want to find behind the windows of a dream studio advent calendar. Some of the things we own, some we wish we did. Owned or not, we think any of the things we name in the next 5 days would be a gift to a professional studio owner. Paul Maunder chooses the Avid S6 control surface.

Day 20 - Avid S6

I’ve used all of the various control surfaces which Avid have released over the years. Back in 1999 I got to try out their first one, the Digidesign Pro Control. This was amazing at the time as it allowed Pro Tools to be controlled by something more akin to a traditional mixing desk rather than the keyboard and mouse I’d used up to that point. In the following years various large format control surfaces were released including the Control 24, Icon D Command, D Control and the C24. Numerous smaller ones came and went too. These included the Digi 002, Command 8 and Artist Mix. It was in 2013 though when things got really interesting. Avid had acquired Euphonix a few years earlier, a leader in large format control surfaces and audio consoles. This acquisition allowed Avid to further develop Euphonix’s high speed ethernet protocol, Eucon. Eucon allows control surfaces to connect and communicate with Avid and third-party audio, video and monitoring applications. At the International Broadcasting Convention in September 2013 Avid announced the S6, a large format control surface which was modular, allowing easy configuration and expansion.

One of the studios where I work invested in an S6 in 2015. They installed a 24 fader M40 configuration with display modules. The display modules are screens which sit at the top of the console. Each display module displays information for 8 channels. The Eucon protocol allows this to be quite rich, with the option of displaying meters, routing, scrolling waveforms, and other information. The display can be tailored to display different views, depending on what’s required.

Intuitive Operation

I find the S6 to be very intuitive to use. If you know Pro Tools well, you can get to grips with most of the functions easily without having to refer to the user manual. The Master Module contains the brains of the S6 and has a built in multi-point touch screen. I find this very useful when dynamically panning sounds in surround.

Automation on the S6 is of course one of the most important functions and again, if you know Pro Tools you can figure certain functions out. An example of this is temporarily suspending a track from its group by holding down Control. There’s a set of modifier keys at the bottom of each bank of 8 faders and they operate just as they do on a Mac or PC. Holding shift will allow you to then use the Select keys to select multiple tracks and holding Option while tapping a fader will zero it. All of the functions from the Pro Tools automation window can be found in the soft key section of the S6. Functions such as Write To End and Punch Capture can be initiated from here, meaning you can perform a mix without having to rely on the keyboard and mouse much. Memory locations can be recalled from the S6 too.

Layout Mode

I could go on for a long time about why I like the Avid S6 but one more feature to mention here is Layout Mode. This is a function which allows you to create custom arrangements of faders which are independent of the session layout. You could, for example, create a layout which shows you just foley tracks and the master fader, or one which consists of just dialogue tracks and auxes. Up to 48 layouts can be stored with each Pro Tools session. They’re stored within the actual .PTX document, so if you work in multiple facilities with an S6, the layouts will move around with the session.

The current line up of Avid control surfaces consists of the S1, S3, S4 and S6.

We’ve only touched briefly on a handful of the features of the Avid S6. For an overview of several of the functions, take a look at the video from Avid below.