Don’t Stop the Music

Client: Al Wood, MQA <Al@mqa.co.uk>

Audio mixing desks are a mystery to many, as you might know if you’ve ever had to diagnose the silence when your friend’s band goes onstage. Desks have only got more complicated as they integrate USB soundcards for capture and streaming. There’s an opportunity to make life a lot easier for the amateur stagehand, with a phone app to communicate over Bluetooth with a standalone computer (say a Raspberry Pi) that can be connected to the USB port of any low-end mixing desk like the Yamaha MW/12CX. The app should listen to the sound output, analyse the signal, and send either audio test data or user instructions to optimise all the settings.