With seemingly limitless functionality at the engineer’s disposal, the modern DAW is pivotal to any mix done inside the computer. In spite of this, could the workstation be drawing too much attention away from the ultimate mixing technique?

Un-Mixed Signals

In the pre-DAW era, audio mixing had some similarities with driving a car. Both were carried out via interactions with physical controls, with the operator’s decisions essentially based on feedback from the result itself. In this basic form, most would agree that driving a car required much less auditory information, and audio mixing much less visual feedback to carry out effectively. This way of working can only come about where a dedicated ‘machine’ with dedicated controls is used for the task in hand, be that a car, an audio mixer, or indeed a computer.

The Ultimate Machine

As in many industries, the computer has been able to distil our industry’s everyday tasks into pure information, replacing a raft of dedicated machines with a single entity. With this convergence of tasks into a single place, the ‘bunching’ of visual feedback onto a single screen is commonplace. The most efficient way to navigate all of this condensed functionality is arguably to employ some familiar friends: the keyboard and mouse.

Visual Feedback Or Visual Overload?

While some developers opt to keep their GUIs clean and concise, others have their feet firmly in the “sound good, look good” school of design. While this can help to nurture feelings of a hardware-like experience, few would argue that their glossy exteriors actually aid better decisions. With the need to stay (literally) focussed on the mix, there is much potential for visual overload.

On a related note, relying on the eyes can also give rise to confirmation bias; that is that we are susceptible to making biased assessments based upon existing beliefs. How many times has an engineer ‘turned’ a knob in software and heard a change only to discover the plugin was in bypass? While this isn’t exclusively a software problem, changing a software control with the mouse without actually looking can be inaccurate, whereas looking too much can feed into our own biases.

Three Ways Back To Listening

Going back to the fundamental task in hand, any tool that encourages listening over looking is worth considering, and for many, the ultimate listening aid is the control surface. By reducing the need to look, engineers are afforded the opportunity to listen in a more objective way, akin to the pre-DAW mixing experience. We’ve covered many of these on the blog over the years, but more recently the choices have settled into a small number of form factors.

Channel Strip Controllers

With the ubiquity of the ‘4k’ style channel strip audio plugin showing no signs of waning, this venerable Filters-EQ-Dynamics toolbox-in-one’s popularity was sparked by those who cut their teeth on the real thing, and perpetuated by others who want a slice of the action. Kicked off by Softube’s Console One hardware controllers for the company’s 4k model and more, SSL’s own UC1 controller for Native Channel Strip 2 offers another option. More recently, we looked at Rock Solid Audio’s Control Strip 2, offering a more developer-agnostic option for 4k fans.

Fader Controllers

Representing the largest category, fader-based control surfaces range from single fader space-savers such as PreSonus’ FaderPort, right up to Avid’s scalable S6 family of surfaces. Among a number of solutions offering eight faders (a number with roots in tape’s binary track-counts) is SSL’s recent UF8. This unit’s greatest strength is perhaps the ability to map the user’s own shortcuts and macros across numerous soft keys as well. Squeezing 10 bit fader resolution over MIDI also means it can hold its own against more expensive options.

Button Controllers

Expanding upon the idea of the humble keyboard shortcut, options such as the Hotkey Matrix paved the way for a family of controllers that are essentially a set of programmable hardware buttons to which shortcuts or sequences of shortcuts can be mapped. Using Elgato’s Stream Deck platform and other devices, Soundflow allows intricate mapping of app-specific macros, which can be used for simple switching in the DAW right though to triggering complex sequences and beyond.

The Button To Beat Them All?

While analogue audio mixing tools are no panacea, in-the-box mixing does mean that engineers must manage even more visual input from multiple software tools to produce a purely sonic result. This input will inevitably introduce an element of misdirection from the actual sound produced. This is higher than when previously working in the hardware domain with real faders, controls, and buttons that allowed engineers to listen without looking.

For those times when hardware control is out of reach, simply turning off the display is the best way to make sure that you’re not leaning on your eyesight at the mix’s expense. Much like standing just outside the room to listen to a mix, the shift of perspective it affords will be both welcome and revealing. If you are a Mac user use the keyboard shortcut Shift+Ctrl+Eject, or Shift+Ctrl+Power on newer Mac models. This will instantly fade both the built-in display and any external screens connected to this Mac to black. If you’re a PC user various alternatives exist including tools like Blacktop, or alternatively the power button can be reconfigured directly in the Settings. Depending on your OS version, right-clicking the battery icon in the taskbar reveals Power Options where users can choose what the power button does. If none of these suit you you could always just use the power button on your display!

If you If you haven’t tried it, give it a shot; you might just wonder how the button that affords instant critical listening in the studio had passed you by for so long.

Thanks to Studiospares for the supply of the SSL UF8 used in the making of this article.