Conventional And Virtual Audio Mixing
What the new generation of computers will bring to the party, is the ability to store and process in real time these large multi-track professional audio recording software's without extraordinary cost and complexity.
As to the audio studio itself, the virtual recording studio will offer significant advantages to the personal and project studio owner who records several tracks and uses the facility for his or her own use. Little or no signal processing electronics will be needed external to the computer, due to DSP plug-in processing.
The major stumbling block to the larger users' adoption of 'virtual' mixing consoles is the current lack of smart touch screen lcds, that will allow 'finger fading' and similar access to all plug-in EQ, and other signal processing components in real time as offered by the recording software. Despite the fact that the increased speeds of the central processor units and associated system architectures plus advanced hard drives or magneto-optical drives in these new computers will allow virtually instantaneous response to any mixing input instruction, the so-called 'human engineering' issues will remain difficult to resolve.
In fact, the preference of recording audio professionals and musicians to use hands-on mixing and signal-processing equipment in traditional ways is ultimately the greatest limiting factor in the future development and adoption of the virtual studio on a state-of-the-art personnel computer.
This author began forecasting the advent of the digital studio in the pages of this magazine almost 15 years ago. Much of what was expected of virtual recording and virtual editing, those many years ago, has come to pass. It is interesting to note that at the same time, the birth of the personal computer running with 1MHz CPU chips, 4-bit or 8-bit processing 'words,' and 64 thousand bytes of random access memory revolutionized our technological society. Today, 15 years later, the potential for personal computer CPUs running a thousand times faster with 128-bit processing 'words,' RAM memory capacity 20,000 times or larger and concomitant operating system software's and audio recording, editing or processing software's are just months away. Yet the prospect of human beings working in audio losing their tactile contact with the recording process remains a difficulty to solve.
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