PART III Preamplifiers, Mixers, and Interconnects FIGURE 5.26 138 The Midas Heritage 3000. (Courtesy of Klark Teknik) manufacturers have their own proprietary ways of doing things. The typical analog console, in contrast, will be fairly familiar to a user after ten or 15 minutes. Digitally controlled analog mixers A digitally controlled analog console will be looked at briefly next. The Midas Heritage 3000 shown in Figure 5.26 is a good example of such a mixer. Its control surface is analog, and the signals remain in the analog domain throughout. Digital control gives such things as mute and mute group automation, VCA assign, and virtual fader automation (a row of LEDs adjacent to each fader displays the audio level of the fader regardless of its physical position; moving the fader to the top lit LED gives the operator manual control). Scene memories can thus be programmed into the desk giving the appropriate fader positions and channel mutes, these being of great value in the live mixing situations for which such consoles are designed. Other consoles also provide automation of EQ in/out, insert, aux send enable, group assign, and moving fader automation, albeit at a somewhat higher cost, and such consoles undoubtedly prove their worth in the live sound market where visiting and freelance sound engineers need to become quickly familiar with a console which does not have too much automation. Such consoles are likely to be in use until well into the second decade of the present century. MIXERS WITH INTEGRATED CONTROL OF DIGITAL WORKSTATIONS Integrated control of digital audio workstations is now a growing feature of either analog or digital mixing consoles. In the case of some designs the mixing console has become little more than a sophis- ticated control surface, enabling the functions of a workstation to be adjusted using more conventional controls. This is offered as an alternative to using a computer display and mouse, which can be incon- venient when trying to handle complex mixes. In such cases most of the audio processing is handled by the workstation hardware, either using desktop computer processing power or dedicated signal