VCA's?

Steinberg Lounge
1

Thanks to Timo and the team for the great update!

I am curious, what happened to the VCA fader implementation? I understood it would be in this update.

Peace,
Robin

2

TImo, Fredo - any news on this?

3

Hi Robin,

thanks very much :slight_smile:
VCA Fader implementation is a bigger topic. It is currently planned for Nuendo 6.

Thanks,
Timo

4

Thanks for the reply Timo - much appreciated.

Robin

5

I second that last post - thanks Timo.
Looking forward to that happening!!

6

+1

7

You may refer me to another thread if my question is answered there:

I worked through the 80’s and much of the 90’s on MCI, SSL, and Sony VCA faders and I think I’m very familiar with them. What functions or behaviors of VCA faders are being asked for in Nuendo? It seems to me that many of the most desirable functions are already there.

Thanks,

Mark

8

Mark,

For example the MCI-VCA style. Assign/control a bunch of faders to one fader, so they act like a group, without having to re-route the audio to a group. BTW, I loved the MCI …

Fredo

9

Thanks, Fredo -

I ran MCI 400’s and 600’s, l and I’m about to install a rebuilt JH-618 in my new mix room, with non-automated grouping faders.

That sort of master could be useful. However, the original VCA’s had a tricky aspect in that the attenuation curve could be radically different depending on where the fader was physically positioned, such as a much steeper curve if the fader was at -12dB vs 0dB, due to the audio taper of the fader itself. If your drum mix for instance had overhead channels at a lower position than the snare, in a group fade out the overheads will attenuate on a steeper curve than the snare, causing the blend to change. A master within the group could further complicate that by adding the master fader’s attenuation curve to the equation. Consequently, a master external to the group of faders is preferable to me but I’m open to new features and interpretations. Perhaps the VST faders could be created to avoid the audio taper behavior of VCA faders.

Regards,

Mark

10

That should not happen; it’s defenately the wrong behaviour.
On my MCI, lowering the VCA fader, lowered also the VCA-ed faders. And indeed, some were “traveling” more than others. But that’s only proof that their relative volumes were kept, due to the logarithmic curve of the faders. We had Penny&Giles across the board at a cost of 250€ per fader. (That is 30 years ago …)

Fredo

11

The MCI/Sony MXP-3000 series boards had a good VCA system but also exhibited the varied rates of attenuation. Conveniently the faders would auto-null at whatever position they were in when selected to update. The best way to use those was to keep one’s right hand on the VCA master fader and then position all faders at 0 or even +12 to make sure they were all at the same point of travel. When selected, the faders would null in that position and level changes made with the VCA master would retain the blend within any group .

Flying Faders might be a better model and perhaps the name and theory could be licensed to Nuendo. They always keep the blend (motor driven audio faders) and of perhaps more importance, you can have groups within groups within groups, etc. Any fader can be a master, and a typical drum setup would be snare top and bottom grouped (snare top fader as master), toms grouped (one of them as master), overheads grouped (one of them as master), and then those masters plus individual drum channels tied to a drums master (possibly using the kick drum fader). That master could then be part of a rhythm group. I always felt that Flying Faders were the best fader automation ever.

Sorry to be tedious but I wanted to make the point about perhaps modeling the Nuendo faders as FF instead of VCAs.

12

Ah, proper faders!
P&G are still the finest, for my money - yet now adverts proudly announce “alps faders” - sheesh.
There was a time when Alps faders would not have been given house room, the nasty scratchy things that they are.
They are dreamlike compared to some of the chinese rubbish though…shows how times change.
When I started building my own systems, the big word of warning from all suppliers was “avoid chinese made components” - now it is impossible to get anything else.