Had our technical rehearsal and plotting session today... using DMXControl v2, we got the most of job done although it was not a positive experience. (more on that later).
I have some questions about Audio Cues in DMXControl.
1) Why is there no way to set a level/volume and audition the audio within an audio cue? (you have to create an audio cue to play the track and then a control cue to set the level/volume - this slows down work a lot).
2) What units are the level set in? What is the range of volume/level? (There doesn't seem to be much relationship between the number you put in the control cue to set volume and what you hear. Normally I would expect -6dB to be half as loud).
3) How do you fade out an audio cue? This should be simple - with two parameters a level/volume to change to and the time to do it over. eg fade to 0 over 2 seconds. Instead there are multiple confusing options - "use given value", "use fade in time", "decrease value during fade in", "set to 0 after fade in". I've noticed if you don't set the "use given value" to the current value, the volume can increase before it fades out! This means you have to search back to the previous cue where you set the level for that "channel" to find the value. Grrrr
4) How do you run and audio cue (sound effect) and AT THE SAME TIME fade out two previous audio cues; this is the sequence:
start sound 1 in audio cue on channel 1; set level via command cue
start sound 2 in audio cue on channel 2; set level via command cue
... some other stuff happens (lighting cues) .. then I want this to happen at the same time:
start sound 3 in audio cue
set level of sound 3 in command cue
fade down to 0 sound 1 over 5 seconds
fade down to 0 sound 2 over 3 seconds
I've tried various arrangements, different orders of the various command cues but nothing seems to do what I want. I tried putting this in a "composite cue" to hide the detail but that just slows things down further, as there more clicking. (I have used QLab in the past but this company doesn't have a Mac available to run it).
5) Can you send different "channels" to different physical outputs on a multichannel sound card?
This show is not that busy but still has about 70 lighting and about 50 sound cues, and 10 performers so not have a slick working environment for plotting can really affect how the day goes.
Souko
