Zoom and Pan

Editing smaller UI elements was always a pain on touch devices. The current solution was to switch between the "move only" and "resize only" modes. Those modes (while effective) were cumbersome to use and not really intuitive.

The solution to that was to add zoom and pan. Now you can simply zoom in to editing finer details.

Various keyboard and mouse shortcuts are available (space / 3rd mouse button to move, wheel to zoom) as well as pinch-to-zoom.

Pinch-to-zoom was implemented in a way that prevents accidental movements of UI elements.

To select UI elements, you now have a dedicated "select" mode, accessible in the bottom left menu.

Resize behavior

Being able to zoom meant that now we can simply increase the resize handles making it easier to resize items while still being able to move them without issues.

Also, the selected UI item now has priority over others. See this example:

In the past clicking on the left resize handle would have selected the button in the background. But now it correctly allows you to resize the selected item.

New Menus

The old top menu bar was cluttered with items, some self-explaining - others not.

A lot of those have been simplified / merged and moved into a context sensitive menu-bar at the bottom of the screen:

The left side controls how you interact with the editor (Move, Pan, Select) and the right side is context sensitive for the currently selected UI element.

UI Settings

In the past when editing an UI element, the settings dialog was opened on a new view. This meant that you couldn't see what you're actually changing.

To improve that, the UI settings are now available directly inside the layout editor:

This side-menu can ba resized or closed depending on the available screenspace.

Changes are applied immediately so you can see what you're actually doing

Beta feedback

So far the feedback during the beta test was rather positive. While it takes some getting used to if you're used to the old way, you are usually much faster than before.

Release

Those changes will be included in 3.2.0

In the end you have to trust them not to download another app to access the FoH mix, or not to accidentally break something. And telling them to download the correct app for your desk, then configuring it costs time which isn't always available.

(Of course if you're a musician traveling with your own gear all those point aren't an issue. This post focuses on venues and sound engineers)

While Mixing Station already has a personal monitoring mode, it requires the app and configuration and can be confusing for the average "I just want to make channel X louder" person.

So what's the solution?

Mixing Station Web-Access

To solve all those issues I've added a new web-based interface available in the Desktop version of Mixing Station:

It can only control the monitor mixes you configure, and only provides access to level, pan and send mutes.

Layers are configured automatically based on screen size but can be adjusted if required. Settings are stored inside the browser.

The configuration is done directly inside Mixing Station (Mixer menu -> Web Access):

You can even print the QR code and hang is somewhere.

Network Segmentation

If you really want to secure things you can now segment your network and provide a dedicated Wifi which just has access to the Mixing Station Web-UI. This of course requires some network knowledge, and is totally optional in using this feature. But it allows you to ensure no-one can access things they're not supposed to.

Mixer <------>     Mixing Station      <---> Web Access
               Desktop (Win/Mac/Linux)       Any browser
192.168.0.1  192.168.0.2  |  10.1.1.1        10.1.1.2

(yes, I still do my ascii art by hand, no AI here)

This requires a 2nd network interface on your desktop system or a switch with ACLs. I won't go into details as this is an advanced setup

For developers

If you're a developer: The Mixing Station API can now be password protected and put into a read-only mode.

Release

Mixing Station Web-Access will be included in 3.2.0 and will require a subscription.

Now it's time to give you some preview of what you can expect from the new update.

Improved Graphics

The "old-school" looking UI was always a bit of a discussion point between users. Rendering was optimized to save cpu/gpu cycles to save on battery. But as newer chips and devices are now more common, it is now easier to render more complex graphics without any penalty on the battery.

New Knobs

Knobs are now in a proper 3D design with dynamic shadows and coloring:

New metering

The meter indicators are now using smooth gradients in "smooth" mode with a small peak-hold indicator, and proper LED segments with glow in "LED" mode:

Smooth	LED	LED

Sliders

Sliders are now also with shadows and an improved position indicator:

General	Sends	Pan

Note that the pan sliders have also been replaced, it is not possible anymore to choose between 2 styles.

Counterintuitively these UI changes even save on battery on nearly all tested devices (even on a 9-year-old Amazon Kindle).

Also: You can still use the theme system to change the colors to your liking.

Improved theme editor

The theme editor now groups items by category, and provides more previews. Also editing the color of custom UI elements is now easier.

Custom Images

This feature is already available in the current version, but has been improved. You can now also use custom images for buttons.

MS Scene Improvements

MS Scenes now have a configurable scope, which is stored inside the scene itself (similar to how some mixers use Snapshots).

The scope is now also configurable on a per-channel basis!

MS Scene and MS Preset actions

It is now possible to recall MS Scenes, Channel Presets, FX Presets and Input Routing presets using actions!

This allows you to recall for example routing changes, or single channel preset with a single button.

Metering

The metering tap points a now properly labeled instead of just Pre/Post so you know the actual point in the signal chain that you're looking at

Send-Assignments

Improved send assignment view with direct access to the signal tap points

Depending on the feedback I receive there might be some additional changes, so this is not the final list.

It also snaps into place using similar distances to other item as a reference, allowing you to quickly place items with equal margin between them.

This makes it very easy to quicky create layouts that look nice, and it's much easier than with the previous grid system.

Speaking of grid system: With the addition of smart snap, the previous grid system felt a bit out of place as it now lost its importance. Therefore, it has been removed from the main menu and placed into the layout settings popup:

There you can also disable smart snap if you want.

The snap grid itself is now also much finer, but to avoid visual clutter the grid that you see on the screen is bigger.

Those changes will be tested in the beta and might be adjusted based on feedback.

Take a look at the full changelog for more details about the update.

The most important changes in this release is the compatibility with Avantis 2.0. This required a bit of a refactoring of the dLive code to make it reusable for Avantis (since both are now having Ultra FX processing).

To give some insights to non-developers why new mixer firmware updates may take some time before they are supported by Mixing Station. Just for the Avantis 2.0 change I had to:

• Check all parameters available for changes (more than a couple of thousand)
• Reverse engineer the IDs that have been changed by the update (a couple of hundred)
• Change how FX/Comp/Gate models are recalled
• Change about 5200 lines of code
• Write new tests to ensure the new logic works as expected
• Do testing with the actual hardware to make sure everything works
• Fix metering

All that in about 3-4 days. So please be patient before installing new firmware updates, always check the compatibility matrix first 🙂

The majority of feature updates require Mixing Station to be updated as well to be compatible.

In case of the Avantis 2.0 update a lot has changed. Therefore, it might take a week to get everything working and implemented.

Mixing Station 2.9.0 will include these changes and it's currently already in beta test.

If you already updated your Mixer but need Mixing Station to work, please consider downgrading the Desk until support for 2.0 has been added. You can find the current version compatibility listed in the manual

To streamline communication I've added a blog system to the website. Here you'll find infos about upcoming updates, changes and more detailed explanation about certain bugs that are being worked on.