High Voltage
I am a keen music-technology enthusiast, and have been reading the review of the Chandler TG Channel in January's Sound On Sound. I should also explain that my main job is director of an electrical safety testing company.
My eyes were drawn to the picture of the inside of the TG Channel's power supply. As far as I can tell from the photo, the mains connector looks like it is a two-pin device (live and neutral) and there is no provision for earthing on the power supply. This is potentially very serious as it would mean that the case would almost certainly become live if one of those hand-soldered joints gave way and a mains wire came adrift!
I would be interested in knowing whether the product has any CE approval or has gone through any kind of type testing before sale. It may well be that the design of the production model has changed from that given to the magazine for review.
I should point out that I have no commercial interest here, nor am I connected to any official or enforcement body. I am passing these comments to you in the hope that they will be useful to you.
Tim James
Technical Editor Hugh Robjohns replies: In the nicest possible way, I'm very pleased to say you are mistaken here! It's a little difficult to see from the angle at which the picture was taken, but the mains inlet (at the bottom right) is a standard three-pin IEC socket, complete with earth terminal. The incoming mains earth is connected directly to the power-supply case adjacent to the mains socket, via a loop of insulated wire. Admittedly, the wire used to do this is coloured blue, which is confusing, but rest assured, there is a decent safety earth connection to the chassis.
Controllable Urges
I was dead chuffed to open the latest Sound On Sound to find reviews of the Behringer BCF/BCA2000 hardware MIDI controllers.
After reading a generally very informative review, I was disappointed, because for me, the most important factors determining the overall usefulness of the product weren't covered in enough detail. But this appears to be the case in nearly all previous reviews of control surfaces, such as the Mackie Control, Radikal Technologies SAC2.2 and so on. What I'm talking about is just how well a controller functions within a particular DAW, perhaps looking at three of the big names, say Logic, Cubase and/or Sonar. By this I mean how functions such as control assignments and fader-bank switching are implemented, and how the control surface follows on-screen selection. And while I know many people will immediately say that this isn't really the domain of the hardware manufacturers but down to how the DAW developers provide support, and thus not within the scope of the review, I'd respond by saying that this integration is the single most important thing in determining how useful your £157 or £999 control surface will be when used day-to-day.
I've found further coverage of the Behringer controllers on the Internet, but there were still plenty of questions left unanswered. I know that web-site-based reviews have more potential 'column inches' to devote to reviews, and no deadlines, but I feel that any review of the products really need to address the usability questions in depth in order to be of any real value to those of us who are looking for guidance.
SOS Forum Post
Managing Editor Matt Bell replies: By their very nature, generic controllers are designed to be used with as many pieces of recording software as possible, and this immediately makes writing a definitive review difficult. At one extreme, testing a given controller with every possible software and hardware combination is beyond the resources of any magazine, especially within an acceptable timescale. At the other extreme, using it with just one sequencer setup, on one computer platform, is likely to give an unbalanced picture of the device's functionality.
Moreover, like most of its readership, SOS's reviewers are musicians and engineers, and like most of us, they tend to use one or two major recording and sequencing applications which they know well. This makes it hard to write reviews of generic controllers with all of the major sequencing and recording packages. You'd either have someone commenting in detail on what operation is like with one or two packages — the ones with which they're most familar — and being very sketchy about the others, or you'd have to pass the review unit around multiple reviewers to cover the behaviour with all applications. This would immediately turn the piece into a talking shop, as reviewers obviously don't all necessarily share the same opinion. For this reason, as well as logistical complexity (shunting the review unit between three or four reviewers instead of one would add considerably to the time it takes for a review to be printed), we've avoided taking the latter approach. Instead, we compromise, and find reviewers who can comment on a generic controller's behaviour in detail with as many packages as possible. In practical terms, this usually amounts to three or four of the major applications; so in the case of Mackie Control, we tested with Cubase and Nuendo, Samplitude, Digital Performer, and Pro Tools ( Logic was not supported at the time of the review). With the Radikal 2.2SAC, we used Logic , Cubase and Pro Tools , and with the B-Controls, Derek Johnson used Reason, Pro Tools LE, Sonar and Cubase . To date, this is the most far-reaching approach we can come up with while still allowing authors to comment about the behaviour of the controller under review with software they know well, and while still remaining within the bounds of what's practical each month.
SOS contributor Derek Johnson adds: As Matt has said, I, and other reviewers, do try products such as the B-Controls on a wide range of software, and if tests turn up something nasty or inconvenient, we'll flag it. The B-Controls, however, were well behaved, although I understand some users are now reporting niggles with some flavours of Cubase . Generally, I feel that the B-Controls are great value, and offer remarkable control in a wide range of circumstances. And from my experience, the company are doing what they can in terms of drivers and emulation from their end: a number of updates appeared while I was conducting my review. I hope that a combination of this natural upgrade process and lobbying on the part of users can iron out any remaining problems between these controllers and the software we're using with them.