The NewTek TriCaster has several hardware control surfaces that are all compatible with its various TriCaster offerings. There’s the massive CS850, the smaller version CS450, and the LC-11 and VM/RS-8. While they are all solid ways to get a tactile command of video switching, none of them have audio control capability. That may soon change. The TriCaster 850 and 850 Extreme are incredible machines, with plenty of audio potential. The potential is greatly underutilized however.
The TriCaster 850 series has 16 XLR analog audio input and 6 XLR outputs. In addition, it has 8 multiple channel AES/EBU Audio inputs with another 8 inputs of multi-channel audio embedded in the SDI inputs. There’s a LOT of audio that can come into this machine both analog and digital and decent output options.
This under-utilization could be helped along with the introduction of a dedicated audio control surface. There is simply too much audio going on for a click-and-drag approach to audio mixing. It is impossible, for instance, to adjust multiple channels of audio independently and simultaneously (as in using multiple fingers to adjust a mix on a traditional audio mixer) thus giving you full real-time control of your audio sources. A control surface would change that.
Also lacking from the product is a basic automation or “macro” function. This would be great on the video side as well as the audio side. There are some third party solutions, like using x-keys or Young Monkey’s “Master Control” tablet based hardware controller, but neither are designed to specifically control audio with faders and the like.
Ideally a TriCaster audio control surface should have the following basic features:
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100mm motorized faders
Macro Functions
Minimum of 8 channels
Multiple channel banks
Rotary Encoders
Small Digital Display
The National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) conference this January 19, 2012 would be a perfect opportunity to debut such a device. SAV has its fingers crossed that such an offering has been secretly in development and will now see light of day.