Studer Vista 5 M3, Operating Instructions Manual

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Vista 5 M3 Digital Mixing System
GC Operation 4-145
Document generated: 28.08.13 SW V4.9
4.7.6.3 Option: VCA-Style Control Groups (‘Motors Off’)
The ‘Control Group Masters’ in a classic sense were implemented in such a
way that all channel faders belonging to a certain control group would auto-
matically move whenever the master fader was moved. This has the advantage
that you always visually see the audio settings currently active in the DSP
core. However, there are two drawbacks to this behavior:
When the Control Group Master fader is closed, the user cannot adjust the
balance between the member channels, since they are moved down together
with the master fader.
When the master fader is closed, it is still possible that there is some audio
passing through some of the member channels, since their fader is not com-
pletely closed.
With software release 3.4, there is now an alternative way of how the control
group master channels can work, that is very similar to the VCA groups of an
analog mixing console. Sometimes, this new behavior is also called ‘motors
off’. In this mode, the value set on the control group master channels (as
seen on their scale) is added to or subtracted from all member channels, and
the resulting (audio) level is set in the DSP core. The faders of the member
channels don’t move up/down, and so it is possible to have the master fader
closed but still to correct the balance between the member faders. In addition,
the user can be sure that whenever the master channel is closed, no audio can
be heard from the member channels. Since the fader of a member channel
doesn’t represent the real audio value anymore, the digits below the label
display are indicating the real audio value.
Notes
If ‘VCA style’ operation is active, you may see member channels change their
fader values as soon as they are added to a control group. This is the case if
the master channel is already set to a value different from 0 dB at the moment
when a new slave channel is added to the group. This behavior is by intention,
in order not to have any audio changing when adding or subtracting member
channels from a control group. Example: You have set a microphone channel
to –15 dB, and you add it to a ‘VCA’ group the master channel of which is
already set to –10 dB. In the moment the microphone channel is added to that
group, the user will see the microphone fader jump up to –5 dB. This results
in no audio change, as requested.
The VCA style Control Groups option can be found in the Option menu
of the graphical controller screen.