302. Sam Kusnetz Of Figure 53 On QLab 5.5

In Episode 302, Andy and Sean welcome back Sam Kusnetz from Figure 53 to discuss new features in QLab 5.5 software for designing and playing back sound, video, light, and show control cues, particularly the introduction of object-based audio. This episode is sponsored by Allen & Heath and RCF.

The conversation covers the evolution of audio mixing in live events, the importance of user feedback, and the philosophy behind Figure 53’s approach to software updates. They also talk about the upcoming QCLass workshop in Baltimore this September that will provide an opportunity for users to enhance their skills with QLab.

Episode Links:
QLab
QLab Videos
QLab Cookbook
QLab Subreddit
STN Episode 249 With Sam Kusnetz
Audio Nerd Book Club
ANBC Virtual Soundcheck 2025
Warren G and Kenny G — Regulate — Live on Jimmy Kimmel
Episode 302 Transcript

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Transcript

Episode 302 - Sam Kusnetz, QLab Goes Object-Based!

Note: This is an automatically generated transcript, so there might be mistakes--if you have any notes or feedback on it, please send them to us at signal2noise@prosoundweb.com so we can improve the transcripts for those who use them!

Voiceover: You’re listening to Signal to Noise, part of the ProSoundWeb podcast network, proudly brought to you this week by the following sponsors:

Allen & Heath, whose new dLive RackUltra FX upgrade levels up your console with 8 next-generation FX racks – putting powerful tools like vocal tuning, harmonizing, and amp simulation right at your fingertips. Learn more at allen-heath.com

RCF and TT+ AUDIO.... Delivering premium audio solutions designed for tour sound and music professionals for over 75 years.  Visit RCF at RCF-USA.com for the latest news and product information.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green

[00:00:54] Andy Leviss: Hey, welcome to another episode of Signal to Noise. I'm your host Andy Leviss. With me, as always, the Warren to my G, Mr. Sean Walker. What's up, Sean? Regulated?

[00:01:04] Sean Walker: Regulating dude

[00:01:06] Andy Leviss: Have you ever seen the, have you ever seen the video of Warren G and Kenny G and I think it was on Jimmy Kimmel team me up to play "Regulate"?

[00:01:13] Sean Walker: No, but now I have

[00:01:13] Andy Leviss: it's all, I gotta, I gotta make a note to link it in the show notes.

It's, it's pretty, it is the

only, it's, it's the only. Oh, go, go ahead.

[00:01:24] Sean Walker: Nothing. I was just trying to talk over to be a dick.

Finish what you're saying.

[00:01:27] Andy Leviss: um, it is, it is about the only time in my life I've ever seen a thing involving Kenny G and the phrase that's fucking awesome came out of my mouth.

[00:01:35] Sean Walker: That's funny.

[00:01:36] Andy Leviss: Although the man does rock a suit, like he rocks a slim cut. Like, I'll, I'll say what you will about the vibrato or the hair like it is. He is a, he is a well-dressed vibrato, uh, fiend.

[00:01:49] Sean Walker: All right. All right.

[00:01:51] Andy Leviss: Uh, but any, anyway, uh, what's, what's new with you, bud?

[00:01:54] Sean Walker: That was the first, uh, that was the first kinda hip hop rap song that I heard and I was like, holy shit, I got, I gotta own that dude

[00:02:01] Andy Leviss: Yep.

[00:02:02] Sean Walker: lot. A lot of it was like, you know, that came out in a time when our lives were like, ah, you know, it's cool. Ah, whatever. I don't, it's not really connected, you know what I mean?

That one came out and literally I just, everybody I knew every time that song came out would just be like, mouth up.

[00:02:15] Andy Leviss: Nice.

See every, every once in a while, my intro joke actually lands well with Sean. This is one for

[00:02:21] Sean Walker: Yeah, right. right. A hundred percent dude. A hundred percent.

[00:02:24] Andy Leviss: So,

[00:02:25] Sean Walker: good man. We're just, uh, we're just rocking over here. I, uh, went and did my first gig on site since January for my company.

I've been, uh, you know, office. Dude,

man, am I sore and tired, bro? I'm out of fricking, I'm outta shape and rusty. You know what I mean?

It all

went, it all went peachy. It was an easy peasy gig, but man. Just break it out. Those like, wait, how do I do that again? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. How do I audio again? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:02:49] Andy Leviss: I, I mean, I, I actually dropped because I couldn't get him into my regular doctor, dropped at an urgent care this morning to get my like slightly injured wrist, uh, out and they're like, uh, did

you fall? What happened?

[00:02:59] Sean Walker: Andy.

[00:03:00] Andy Leviss: Uh, yeah. Um, and I, and, and they were like, like, what did you like fall? Do you hurt yourself at work?

And I'm like, I think I'm just old and slept on it. Weird.

[00:03:11] Sean Walker: Totally.

Dude, you're

[00:03:12] Andy Leviss: the guy was like, yep, yep, that happens. So, uh, another week or so with a wrist brace for me,

[00:03:19] Sean Walker: All right. Yeah. I

wish I had a cool story of like what the other guy looked like, but

alas, I think I just fucking got old bro.

[00:03:26] Andy Leviss: Yep. Yep. I just, I, I slept on my arm in a strange position and woke up and it hurt and it still hurts a week and a half later.

[00:03:33] Sean Walker: Yeah, I did. I remember the first day years ago, I woke up, looked in the mirror, and I was like, who is the fucking fat old guy with the gray beard in the mirror? Oh shit, that's me.

[00:03:41] Andy Leviss: I mean, even as blurry as my camera images, you can start to see the salt and pepper coming

[00:03:45] Sean Walker: Yeah, right.

[00:03:46] Andy Leviss: mine. I'm like, that's, the temples have been there for a while. I know exactly which former boss it was. Sam does too. It's not your boss. It's not your boss, but you know which of my former bosses it is.

[00:03:56] Sean Walker: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:03:57] Andy Leviss: Um, but that, that said, since I just name checked him, we should introduce our returning guest, uh, Sam Kusnetz, uh, from figure 53. What's up, Sam?

[00:04:05] Sean Walker: What's up, dog?

[00:04:07] Sam Kusnetz: How's it going guys? Really happy to be back.

[00:04:09] Sean Walker: Oh yeah, he's out.

[00:04:10] Andy Leviss: There he is.

[00:04:11] Sean Walker: I.

[00:04:12] Sam Kusnetz: Yeah, really, really glad

[00:04:13] Andy Leviss: Uh, yeah. We're glad to have you here 'cause.

[00:04:15] Sam Kusnetz: being invited.

[00:04:16] Andy Leviss: Yeah, well, you know, you guys are, are, uh, you've got a big new update coming out, uh, but it'll have just released by the time folks hear this, uh, QUB 5.5 and there's some awesome new stuff coming in it that we wanted to hear about from you. And, you know, you gave us the chance to kinda get the scoop and get this episode out right when it releases.

So why don't I do a thing that's really hard for me to do and stop blathering on and let you tell us a little bit about what's new.

[00:04:43] Sam Kusnetz: I'm just delighted to do so. Um, there's a lot of, um, a lot of little bits and pieces we, we try not to release, um, new features. Too often because it can be destabilizing to folks on long running shows and it can make it hard to decide to update or not. Uh, so we've got a lot of little bits and pieces that don't necessarily go together.

They're just, they've been waiting, uh, in the wings. Little things like a keyboard shortcut to open the launcher window, which is something we've wanted to do for a while. I mean, that's not destabilizing, but we've waited for a good moment. Um, but the really big. Feature in Q Lab five five that we're, you know, trying to get the word out about is object based audio. Um, so we're adding an object based audio mixer to Q Lab, which works side by side with Q Lab's, existing audio system, uh, and allows you to use uh, a different, and we think much more natural way to move sounds in 2D space on your screen, which can be. Uh, representative of literal space in your theater or can be used as sort of an abstract tool, um, that's just more flexible than a pan knob to decide how your sound gets routed in real time. And so object mixing is sort of, um, not, not a really new idea. I think, uh, maybe the 1960s, uh, I'm a little rusty on this, but about the 1960s when someone first suggested the idea that something more flexible than a volume slider in a pan knob could be used to assign levels of sound in different outputs. Um. But it's really been the last few years that it's taken off in, in live events as tools like the, um, Meyer Space Map Go and El Acoustics Elisa and the d and b DS 100 and other devices like them, uh, have all sort of become accessible enough for, uh, for, for folks to use them in, in shows other than the very highest budget. So people are getting their hands on these tools. Even though the ideas aren't new, the tools are new and they're making it possible to do things that maybe were possible before, but were a hassle. Um, the, the example I like to give is if we have a two channel sound system and we want to pan a sound effect from left to right, that's really easy, right? You turn it up in the left speaker, then you turn it down in the left speaker while you turn it up in the right speaker at the same time, left to right movement, no problem. But if you have a left center, right speaker. And you wanna make the same move. You need to do two fades down and left and up and center, then down and center, and up and right to make the same natural movement. Okay? But if you have a long space with 12 speakers lining that wall, and you wanna do a pan of a sound effect across all those 12 speakers, you have to go down in one, up in two, down in two, up in three, three to four, four to five, et cetera. And while it might be easy to do that, what inevitably happens, as soon as you've completed that phase, the director says, oh, that's great.

Could that take three and a half seconds more? And you say, yeah, sure. And you, you know, add three and a half seconds divided by the number of fades you've got there. And that's fine. But once you do it a bunch of times, you really wish you had an easier tool. And that's really what this is all about. It's about being able to move sound across outputs effortlessly and intuitively.

[00:08:08] Andy Leviss: So, and this is just straight, it's, it's level panning. There's no like delay panning going on.

[00:08:14] Sam Kusnetz: At the moment, this is a, a purely level based algorithm. Um, so for those who don't know, there's basically, um, there ways you can get someone to hear sound at more than one speaker and decide which direction it's coming from. Um, and this is what Bob McCarthy refers to as the Bambi versus Godzilla problem. If you're sitting underneath the under belts and you're right near one and it's the under belt is like right in your face and then, you know, 60 feet away in front of you is the main, the left or center or right main, it doesn't matter which straight in your, in your line, you hear the sound from the main, but you also hear it from the under belt. And if they arrive, uh, if the sound arrives from both speakers. At an appropriate level mix, your ear will not be, your attention will not be pulled towards the under balcony. Your focus will stay up on stage. If they arrive out of time, your attention might be pulled to the under balcony instead of the stage.

So you need to concern yourself with both when the sound gets to your ear from each speaker and how loud the sound gets, uh, to your ear from each speaker and. When you then wanna manipulate attention and say, no, no, no. Pull the audience's focus to the under belt for whatever reason. Maybe we want them to feel as though something is coming at them off the stage. You could either change the time relationship. Or change the level relationship or change both to pull their focus in the direction you want. It pulled the DS 100 uses a mixture of level and time. Uh, space map uses exclusively level. We are using exclusively level at the moment, but we've built a system which opens the door to adding time-based alignment in the future.

SS So we think about, um, one of the, one of the nice things about developing features like this for Q Lab is that you can sort of think about the whole. Apparatus as one, even though, um, Q Lab is an audio tool, it's also a video tool and it's also a show control tool and it's also a networking tool. So, um, when you think about it purely from an audio perspective, the object audio mixer inside Q Lab is designed to sort of take the place of El Eza or DS 100 or Space Map. Um. When it's appropriate for your show. Um, but if you think about it in a slightly more expansive way, Q Lab is one set of tools that can be used in multiple environments. So we think that it would be actually pretty straightforward to use Q Lab's object base, mixing in a rehearsal room, and then migrate that show to a DS 100 or Space Map or Elisa or whatever system. Um. When you move to another venue, um. It's not, um, it's not necessarily our plan that that's what folks ought to do, but we like to keep the door open as much as possible in Q Lab to, um, build the tools in a way that doesn't assume that we know how you're gonna work, doesn't assume that we know what your plans are or which tools you want to use.

We just sort of try to keep the toolbox as open as possible. So if you want to take an object audio project in Q Lab. In the rehearsal hall and then translate that to a DS 100. You can do that, but if you want us, my hope is, and my expectation is for me personally as a designer, I'm gonna go to the rehearsal hall.

I'm gonna use object mixing in Q Lab and realize actually I could save $20,000 on my load in and not rent the DS 100 or the El Eza or the whatever, and I could continue to use Q Lab's, object-based matrix, basically just as I've been doing here. There's another possibility that I might say, no, actually the show requires some specific powers that the Elisa or the DS 100 or the Space Map system gives me, so I will migrate my show. But the, the, the main purpose, the sort of meta purpose of the way that we've designed this is to allow, allow you to make that decision when it's time to make that decision, rather than having to lock yourself into a plan in advance.

[00:12:47] Andy Leviss: So like if, yeah, and if you've got like positional queues in there now, like is it like just like switching a mode from it to, to turn it from like using Q Lavs built-in engine to like the control queues that you've had in previously in version five for the other platforms? Or is there a little more.

Like manual work involved to make that switch over. Like how does that work?

[00:13:07] Sam Kusnetz: There's a little bit more to it, um, but not much more to it. Basically, if you've used network queues with 2D fades in the past, um, then you've already used the engine that, uh, the interface engine, the for object audio, um, fade cues. That target audio now have an objects tab, which has a 2D fade space. And so you can draw a curve in that 2D fade space and your object moves along that curve. Um, we call it a path to distinguish from fade curve shape. So I, I should have said path just then. You can draw a path. Um, you can copy the. You can duplicate your effort by moving the path into a network queue. You have to manually make sure that the coordinate space that you're using for the network queue and the coordinate space that you're using for the object audio system are the same.

And the way that you do that is, uh, sort of another aspect of Q Lab's object audio system that I, I think is important to point out. It's not a strictly spatial system like the DS 100, if you want to use a DS 100. Uh, in any way that isn't. This is literally where my literal speakers are. They're pointing in this direction.

The room is this shape. Then you have to lie to the machine because the machine assumes that one meter of space inside DS 100 is one meter of real space in, in reality. Whereas Q Lab uses an approach much more similar to Meyer. We have. A virtual space. It is some size. Are there units? No, it's just a thousand by a thousand of unitless numbers. And that's the kind of coordinate space Q Lab uses, which means you get to decide, okay, is it just that I'm gonna make an object map where left is my whole sound system with reverb, and on the right side is my whole sound system without reverb and I can wiggle the little pip back and forth to add or subtract reverb, or. You could decide I'm gonna make a coordinate space in which 10 pixels on screen represents 10 centimeters in reality. And then I lay out my map in such a way as to make that true. So when I move the pip over here, it goes to the speaker that's over there, and when I move it over there, it's to the speaker that's over there. It's something that's very difficult to translate in an audio only, um, podcast. Uh, so I'm trying to. Trying to be precise without sort of having a visual aid. Um, but the point is that it works as you like. So if you have a network queue set up to control an elisa and you have a coordinate space that corresponds to the coordinate space of the elisa, so you can make a path and fly some sound around the ELISA system, if you were planning to do that. And planning to use object audio. In preparation, it would be wise to set up an object audio map inside Q Lab that mimics the layout of the ELISA system so that you could copy and paste or duplicate data easily from one to the other. We do hope that. Over time, you know, if, if this is something folks are excited about doing, it's something that we can continue to improve and refine.

There's a lot of space to build there. We didn't wanna put a huge amount of effort into it because we're not sure that people are going to use it that way. So we thought, all right, let's wait and see if folks use this a lot in this manner. We'll, we'll build in some more tools to make that even easier.

[00:16:41] Andy Leviss: Got it. So I imagine it, we should encourage folks who play with this to reach out and let you know how they're using it, what would make it more useful to them, and that sort of stuff.

[00:16:49] Sam Kusnetz: We would absolutely love that. We are constantly surprised by the way that people use Q Lab and delighted I might add. And the more we hear that, the more, uh, the more delighted and surprised we are, but also the more we hear. About how people are using Q Lab, the easier it is for us to build adjustments and features and um, and explore new design avenues to suit those use cases. Um, it took a long time for us to learn that. There are folks who use Q Lab in live sporting events situations. Okay, let's learn more about that. Please, what works for you? What do you need? If this button did this instead of that, would that change your life? And it turns out, yes, so we just made the button do that other thing. And the theater folks didn't notice. And the live sports people were like, oh, Q Lab is now the best tool ever for us. Um, you know, speaking a little hyperbolically, but that one guy who worked for the Patriots really loved the change.

[00:17:48] Sean Walker: Nice. You know, it's funny to me how few companies are that open and excited about customer feedback, uh, which kind of seems a little silly to me. Like the rest of us would love a direct pipeline into our customer's thoughts so that we could, you know, sell and market to them and give them what they want. So many companies are not. I'm stoked to hear that you guys are like, yeah, gimme all the feedback. Tell me what you're doing so I can make sure to give you what you need and you know, take your money for giving you what you need. It's awesome, dude. Great job.

[00:18:19] Sam Kusnetz: Yeah.

I mean, I'm not have that anyone how to go ahead.

[00:18:24] Andy Leviss: Oh, sorry. I was saying if, if folks have that feedback, where should they send it to?

[00:18:28] Sam Kusnetz: I am so glad you asked Andy. Uh, you can write to support@figurefiftythree.com, F-I-G-U-R-E five three.com. Um, we also have a pretty, uh, active Google group, uh, which you can find links to on our website, Q lab.app. Uh, anyone is welcome to join the Google group. We have. Folks on there who have won multiple Tony Awards, and we have folks on there who are named Tony. Uh, we have high schoolers, we have community theater, we have professionals. It's, uh, a whole variety, uh, in that community and it's really. It's a really nice space. There is a Facebook group that is not run by us, which I cannot encourage you enthusiastically enough to stay away from if you're looking for official support. Um, because it's a, it's a bad mill you for support, but it can be a good place to meet other folks who use Q Lab and if you. Are someone who is still ensnared by the trap of Facebook, then that's a good place to find other Q Lab folks. And we have a subreddit, which is um, has all the good things and all the bad things about every other subreddit.

[00:19:38] Sean Walker: Copy.

[00:19:39] Sam Kusnetz: But to your point

earlier, Sean, about like.

[00:19:42] Sean Walker: and then say how awesome Sam is. I got it. I'm gonna send some emails now.

[00:19:45] Sam Kusnetz: Yep. Bingo. Exactly. Thank you Sean. Um, uh, that's exactly right and in fact, every word that I said, um, to your point though about other, like, I don't wanna tell anyone how to run their business. I certainly don't. Uh, every business is different and you know, like as we have continued to grow and work more closely with other companies, it's really fascinating to learn. Like, okay. What does it take to communicate with ETC? What does it take to communicate with Yamaha? What does it take to communicate with d and b? They all have their own culture. They all have their own needs and their audience, uh, or their customers all work in a certain way and the company sort of adapts to participate for us, you know, it's free market research, it's information, it's user testing, and uh, we find that. Uh, there's a certain sort of person, a certain sort of lovable nerd who really gets a lot out of being more involved in a back and forth, uh, in a discussion about the future direction of Q Lab. Some folks find it frustrating, some folks find it glorious, some folks find it confusing. But for us, we wanna build the tool so that you'll use it.

So. If we can find out there, those folks who are using Q Lab, who are able to communicate in a way that makes sense to us, that's, that's, that's gold to us, that's absolutely the most valuable thing.

[00:21:11] Sean Walker: Can I just call and tell you how many times I broke it and can't figure it out? Does that count as support and help?

Is that helpful to you?

[00:21:18] Sam Kusnetz: Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, one of the most useful things that we've learned in the last year is like. There's a specific little bug, and it's not in Valhalla's Room reverb, and it's not in Q Lab. It is in the relationship between Valhalla's Room Reverb and Q Lab. So while I love Valhalla's Reverbs at the moment, my strongest advice is don't use it in Q Lab a lot. Use it by all means. Use it in your DAW. I mean, it sounds great and we have been figuring out. Oh, that's what keeps breaking. So we're trying to figure out, actually it's, we actually think it's a bug in Apple's code that we need to figure out how to circumnavigate, but it's a tricky one.

So just hearing What breaks. Yeah, I know. Can you believe it? Apple has bugs in their code. Um, on which topic? It's August, which means, uh, very soon. You're all gonna get pretty strong come-ons on your Apple devices to update to the next version of Apple's oss, which I have to tell you I don't recommend if you're about to do a show. Um, so this is a

good opportunity for me to double

down on

[00:22:34] Sean Walker: talking weird, Sam.

[00:22:36] Sam Kusnetz: Yeah. You know, like. So the version number like as, as a number, and then a dot, and then zero when it first comes out. Right? This year it'll be 26, 26 0.0, and they changed their numbering scheme. So it's now year based, but it's not the year it comes out, it's the following year. It comes out in September, 2025, but it's, it's MAC O as an iOS

version

[00:22:58] Andy Leviss: they're a car manufacturer.

[00:23:00] Sam Kusnetz: But here's what's so great about it. It tells you what year should it be when you decide to update. If it's

not 26,

[00:23:08] Andy Leviss: be the bleeding edge.

[00:23:10] Sam Kusnetz: absolutely, and I'm not, I'm not here to talk about whether it's good or bad, what the updates are like, that's not actually interesting to me right now. Only what's interesting to me right now is keep your shows stable and don't update if you're about to walk into tech.

[00:23:25] Sean Walker: A hundred percent and that gives you guys. A few months to go figure out what they changed or you, everybody, not just you, right? Everybody who makes software that has to run on either a PC or a, or an any computer, it gives you a few months to go like, oh man, they changed that thing that we were really relying on and now it's fubar, so let's go on fubar it basically, right.

[00:23:44] Sam Kusnetz: absolutely, absolutely. And this year there are a

huge number of changes to the um, the. Visible parts of the oss. Um, setting taste aside, whether you like it or not, is not even relevant right now. They're big and so like things like the fundamental size of a system, default checkbox is a different size than it used to be. So if you're layout, your screen layout made it look really nice with four check boxes now, maybe only three fit. So you have to just spend your time figuring out what you've gotta change to make it just. Plane look okay. Let alone work. Okay. Um, Q Lab uses mostly custom, uh, check boxes and scroll wheels and things like that, so we're a little bit protected from that, but it's still something we have to worry about and I'm looking forward to worrying about it.

Uh, after five, five is released and in the wild.

[00:24:41] Andy Leviss: So, yeah, so. And five, the, the big ticket thing is, is this object based stuff. Is there other like functionality stuff that's in there too that's worth highlighting for folks, or is, is that

[00:24:51] Sam Kusnetz: Yeah, there's a. There's a bunch of little tidbits. Um, there's one that we've been asked for so many times, which we finally made, uh, made possible. There's now an optional, uh, um, setting to skip disarmed cues fully. Um, this is one of those things that a small number of people care very deeply about. Um, when a queue is disarmed in Q Lab, it's essentially muted, but it still exists. Uh, as a, a moment in your Q list, that takes up time. So. It's in. The reason for that is if it's in a sequence of cues, we don't want disarming one cue to, to screw up the whole sequence. And for a few years now, we've had people say, no, no, no. I would like to screw up my whole sequence. Please, would you please make it so that a disarmed cue is effectively deleted, but you can just see the ghost of where it was. And that's now optional, uh, on a Q by Q basis. Um, so that's great. We've added, um. Uh, wild carding for OSC messages. This is really for, uh, those people out there who use OSC messages to mute and unmute outputs on their Galileo during soundcheck. So you can now do like slash q slash one slash mute brackets two dash nine and it'll mute outputs two through nine. Um, didn't used to be possible and it is now. Um. We've revamped the way that Q Lab tells you about what's going on with video outputs and camera inputs. So we get much more info and more control over cameras that are plugged into Q Lab and we get more information about, um, uh, output devices. So if you're using black magic devices for video output, you have a little bit more granular control over. Um, we've done some things to improve, uh, visual accessibility for drawing 2D paths, so folks who have, uh, color differentiation challenges, uh, now should be able to see the start and the end of the path much more obviously 'cause we have shape differences as well. Um, we've added a bunch of, um. Live versions of OSC messages so that you can make changes on the fly to your stuff in Q Lab without forcing it.

Uh, it to ask you do you wanna save your changes. Um, we've added about 150 new instrument definitions for lighting instruments. And we've added network device definitions for Abson Fletcher Machine, the Amadeus Acoustics Core and 3D panel. We've added, uh, network device for live professor for Creative Connor Spike Mark six D delight, the elation, obsidian, the Lao mc squared consoles, the Lumin four, and uh, I think something that will excite you, particularly Andy, we've added a network device definition for PJ Link. Which is a feature request you had in, uh, filed, I believe in 2016.

[00:27:46] Andy Leviss: I was gonna say that sounds late for it. I know exactly what show that was.

[00:27:50] Sam Kusnetz: Yeah.

[00:27:51] Andy Leviss: Either There's one of my own shows and then a couple on behalf of customers

[00:27:54] Sam Kusnetz: And then we've got a pile of

minor changes, updates to the DS 100 network device and the DM three and DM seven devices. We're just trying to keep up with also, uh, spat revolution, which just keeps adding features. We're just trying to keep up with them. Um, we've polished up some of our time code stuff.

There's a little bit of, little bit of quirky behavior in time code because it's time code and we've. Made kLab behave a little bit more like everyone else. And then just tiny bug fixes. But about 200 of them, well 150.

[00:28:26] Andy Leviss: Nice. So, and it's, and so 5.5, this is, uh, a paid upgrade, free upgrade. How's, how's that working for folks? I.

[00:28:36] Sam Kusnetz: Anyone who already has a Q Lab five audio license, uh, whether it's a standalone audio, pro audio, or a part of a bundle, uh, gets all of the features in Q Lab 5.5 completely for free. So if you've already got a Q Lab five audio license, you're good to go, no money. Um, if you have a Q Lab four license and you want to update two five, you can do that and you will get the new features. Um, uh, we are. Um, I'm going to change a little bit. As we've announced in the past on the Google Whoop, slightly changed the trade-in value, um, for old Q Lab licenses. So if you wanna make an update, update sooner rather than later. Um, and um, and of course when Q Lab six comes in the distant future, uh, that will be a paid update.

But this is essentially the, the, um. What am I trying to say? This is free for existing users is really the most important thing. Free for existing customers and a paid update that is, uh, you know, should be unsurprising for anyone who's got Q Lab. Four wants to update to five for this, it will, of course it a paid update.

[00:29:50] Andy Leviss: That's awesome and like, I wanna just flag that again. 'cause like this 5.5 update, like most any other company I can think of would've called this version six and charged a bunch of money for like adding an object based engine to it. So it's you. Know, continuing that trend that you all at figure 53 have had with Q Lab of like the value and the not, like trying to squeeze every last penny out of folks is just astounding.

And I want to, I want to give you guys props for that. Or you, you

[00:30:17] Sam Kusnetz: I really appreciate that.

[00:30:17] Andy Leviss: you folks props for that.

[00:30:20] Sam Kusnetz: I appreciate that we, you know, we absolutely are going to have to raise prices. The, the economy of the entire world is different than it was when Q Love five was released and our costs have changed, uh, and changed as a euphemism for gone up. Um, so that's just an inevitability and there's nothing to be done about it, but. We are, we remain committed to raising prices as sustainably as possible with the goal of making, you know, an appropriate amount of money, keeping our costs covered and so forth, and allowing our company to be healthy and to grow. Because what's not good for anybody is the release, you know, the release of a new feature and. It goes so well that suddenly the company is inundated with new customers and everyone's thrilled until the company sort of gets crushed under the support load, and we don't want that to happen. So we need to be able to predict our increase in, in support because we wanna keep support as robust and as speedy as it has been so that people can use the fancy new features that we've built.

Otherwise, what's the point? So we have to keep the company alive, which means we have to raise prices. There's nothing to do about that, but we wanna raise them gently and slowly and only as much as is necessary. We're not VC-backed. We're a traditional company where someone started the company and then the company makes money by selling stuff, which is sort of an odd business model in the software world, but it is our business model and it works pretty well for us.

[00:31:55] Sean Walker: Dude, that's awesome. Yeah. I mean, how could you not raise prices when a cup of coffee used to be $3 and now it's seven? You know what I mean?

[00:32:01] Sam Kusnetz: Yeah, it's just inevitable, right?

[00:32:03] Andy Leviss: it takes a lot of coffee to make software.

[00:32:05] Sean Walker: a hundred percent.

[00:32:07] Sam Kusnetz: it. It really, it really does. Although I, I work with a, a, a pretty impressive number of tea drinkers, tea com, committed tea drinkers. Um, uh, but. This, everyone regulates their co their caffeine in different ways, right? There's like, oh, I have a cup of coffee and then I have a cup of half coffee.

And then in the afternoon I have this much black tea with that much milk. And this, uh, it's a very complicated curve, which I assume I could plot in a network queue if I felt like it. Um, and you know, maybe that's my U-S-I-T-T demonstration next year.

[00:32:39] Andy Leviss: Uh, I mean, is there any, before we dig into a couple of the other things and throw some other questions for you, is there anything else, like about 5.5 that you wanna flag for folks or just about Key Lab in general that, I mean, I know we talked a lot about version five last time we had you on, but for folks either for folks that just haven't poked it lately or.

[00:32:58] Sam Kusnetz: yeah. For me, I guess the thing I really wanna drive home about object audio in Q Lab in 5 0 5 is that first thing, none of your existing audio knowledge is obsoleted. Um, if you use Q Lab exactly the way you like it right now, you don't have to touch or think about anything new. If you don't wanna change, you don't have to change. And, uh, I know that that seems silly to point out, point out, but I actually think that's really important. I get frustrated sometimes, um, with certain, um, certain software development approaches where it's like, forget everything you knew about our software. It's all better and, you know. I'm. I like, I like to feel rewarded for the time I spent in the past learning your software.

And now you have taken that away from me. So I think I choose not to forget everything I learned. Thank you very much. So that's the first thing. And then the second thing is I, I really strongly feel that Q Lab's object audio system is, um, second to none. In terms of learnability. I think that sitting down in front of a DS 100 or an ELISA system can be intimidating and if not intimidating, at least overwhelming. And like I'm a put together person. I'm good at this stuff. I read a lot about this stuff and I sit down in front of the GS 100 and I'm like, okay, here we go. Here we go. And like what I can achieve with it is phenomenal and I think it's a phenomenal product and I'm, I have nothing but love for it, but I get that feeling of like, buckle in Sam.

It's programing time and I really. We have worked really hard to make Q Lab object audio, not feel like that. Make it feel like, all right, I do have to learn a few new things, but everything I knew before helps me. If I, if you've spent any time doing 2D fades in Q Lab, in any method, you know, video can do 2D fades.

Network cues can do 2D fades. You already know a lot of what you need to know to make a 2D fade in, uh, in an audio context in Q Lab. And. As much as possible. The pH, the design philosophy of Q lab, five's, audio engine, uh, object, audio engine is like, go try stuff. You can't hurt it. So just try some stuff.

Put a put a thing on your screen and wiggle it around. And if you like how it sounds, then you did it right. And if you don't like how it sounds, do it differently until you do and then you did it right. And that's the metric. There's no. Extended philosophy to sort of internalize. There's no programming language to internalize.

It's very tactile and very just sort of free flowing. Uh, and that's the second thing. And then the third thing is a little more technical that I want to zero in on. Um, QEB has, uh, objects at two levels of the audio signal path. Um, so the object is the basic unit of audio in an object audio system in, in. In the old way, it's channels, right? You have a channel coming in, you send that channel to one or more buses going out, and a bus is just a collection of channels mixed together. And an ox is a bus with volume knobs, and a bus is a bus with no volume knobs. And a Maine is a bus called Maine, and that's it.

So you have channels coming in, buses going out in an object system. You have channels coming in and buses going out. But in between them. Rather than a series of volume knobs or on off buttons, we have a graphical representation of space, which could be literal space or could be metaphorical space. And then you place within this space, what we call a marks and a mark is just an example mix. So if I had a Q in Q Lab five today before Q Lab five, five comes out and I just mix it the way I like to all my outputs and I say, yeah, that's a mix I like. You can make a mark that captures that mix. And then somewhere else on your map, you make another mix that you like and you make a mark that captures that mix. And all Q Lab's object mixer does is when I move an object to a mark. The sound that passes through that object gets mixed the way the mark says, when I move the object to a different mark, it gets mixed the way that Mark says. And when the object is between those two marks. Q Lab does fancy math and creates a mixture of the mixes from those two marks. So I could have, in the simplest case, you know, uh, imagine a a square with a mark in each corner. And each of those marks sends audio to one single cue output, which is a single speaker each. Then I whip the sound around the room quadraphonic, and I'm back in the seventies in a concert and it's very groovy. Or I could have that same setup, but those four corners are not four individual speakers. The upper left corner is my full house mix. The upper right corner is. A stage focused mix. The lower right corner is, um, a practical speaker on stage, like a radio or something. And then the lower left corner is my full house with lots of reverb, and so I can just sort of drift a sound around that space on screen where it's just drifting between full house mix.

Full house mix with reverb. Onstage, mix and onstage special mix, and anywhere in between produces a synthesized mixture in between any of those positions, and it's just very sort of free flowing and un fiddly. And then to add one

layer on top of that,

[00:38:49] Andy Leviss: Like,

[00:38:50] Sam Kusnetz: yo, go ahead.

[00:38:51] Andy Leviss: oh no, I was gonna say just, that's cool. Like, that's like, it's. I'm picturing like that the classic trope that we do at this point, when there's a record player or radio on a play of taking the music in the radio and the scene and fading it out in the house for the transition, and you're back into a different radio that like if you've worked in theater, you've built those cues by hand so many times and tweet to get it.

Like having that as a tool to kind of. I am gonna say misuse, although it sounds like it was built with that intention, so it's not really misusing it, but to misuse creatively in that way to build that easier is, is awesome. So I wanna make sure like folks really think about that and are, are encouraged to play with these tools in these different ways you're describing and not just the obvious ones.

[00:39:34] Sam Kusnetz: Have you ever used the Chaos Pad?

[00:39:36] Andy Leviss: Yeah. Sean's nodding. I've, I've not, but I'm

[00:39:38] Sam Kusnetz: It's like, it's an old midi, not not that old, but it's a MIDI controller device where basically you have a, you have a left to right axis and an up to down axis, and each axis is like, imagine a pan knob, but rather than panning left to right, it pans between two effects. And so you have two dimensions to sort of mix four different, four different ways of sounding, and you can just. Drag your finger around the thing and make some wild sounds, and our hope is maybe you wanna use it like that. No problem. You can use it just like that.

[00:40:11] Sean Walker: Dude. That's awesome. The first thing that came to mind when you were talking about going between the full house mix and the house mix with reverb and the, you know, little radio mix or whatever was like, you know how those a. Of songs these days have like the telephone drum intro or band intro where it's like real fricking crush down.

You could just move that right into your front fills with the PA off, and so the whole thing sounds all whack. And then as soon as the band comes in, just drag that right over to the whole band of the arena just explodes. That would be so cool. Oh, oh my God. I can't wait to get my nerd on.

[00:40:44] Andy Leviss: See, this is the fun we get when we have, like, when we have like rock, rock and roll focused dudes talking, talking about theater software. Like we, we come together and combine with cool ideas.

[00:40:52] Sean Walker: I'm gonna fuck this all up. Don't even worry about it. I'll be like, Hey man, I broke it all. I'm sorry. Can you help me?

[00:40:56] Sam Kusnetz: No,

dude, that's exactly, that's exactly the goal is like to to, to produce a, to produce an interface that does not feel like, Ooh, if I mess with it, it's gonna break. I'm gonna make, I'm gonna make bad trouble. Like, that's, that's not the goal at all. The goal is to give you a box of Lego and let you sort of go wild.

[00:41:14] Sean Walker: Q Lab, 5.5. Wiggle it till you love it.

[00:41:17] Sam Kusnetz: Yeah. Yeah. And to continue that. Like, so, uh, how do I explain this? On a ELISA or a DS 100, the inputs to the device represent like all the sound you put into the machine. Come on, come in on inputs, and then those inputs get positioned around the virtual space and get mixed to outputs. In Q Lab, we have something that. We have the ability to do something that those tools can't do, which is we can have objects that are available to all cues. So we can say like this object is part of the map itself. The object flies around the theater and any cue can feed it. But we can also have objects that belong to individual cues. And so right now, when you set up an ELISA or a DS 100 system, you have to decide how many objects am I going to create in my show, and then I'll send sound from individual cues to those objects by selecting outputs from Q Lab to designate as object sends. But what we have in Q Lab internally is every queue can just have its own objects. So if I have, uh, objects that belong to the whole map. I can say at, and so there's like my main left object and my main right object and all my cues can feed my main left and right. And those objects can do whatever they do. But then an individual cue, I have one like, oh yeah, this scene has some, you know, so there's some kid flying a, a quad copter drone. Um, and we only hear the drone. We can't see it 'cause we're inside a theater and it's, you know, imaginary. So for the drone queue itself. It could make its own object and that object can fly around and I don't have to worry about that object interfering or receiving sound from any other queue because the object belongs to the queue. Um, my colleague Charles Cos, as we built this system, you know, on paper before building in reality, said I, that I will use mostly map objects, which are available to every queue. I would like to have, you know, a drifting. A drifting object that sort of wanders around the theater all the time. And then any cue can send audio to it and just sort of join up with this cloud floaty, wavy sound queue. And I immediately said, I'm probably gonna use mostly queue objects where each individual cue does its own thing and doesn't interact with others. And what I love about the system we've built is the answer to both Charles's mindset and my mindset is, okay, do that. And if you wanna do a little bit of what the other one's doing, that's okay too.

Or if you want to mix it 50 50, that's okay too. Or if you wanna do all of that, and then for one cue, you're like, I just don't want any of this object nonsense. I just wanna mix it the way I'm used to. Okay, just do that. You don't have to change a setting. You don't have to change a mode. The regular audio mixing engine is. Always available. The object audio mixing engine is always available. You can make as many maps as you like, and each queue can use any one of those maps at any time. So again, it's just layer upon layer of optional, whatever you like. Um, and you can build it up as sophisticated and complex as you need, or you can keep it very vanilla, straightforward, simple, and just get a little bit of help making a, a mix graphically on screen, a little easier and a little faster than twiddling a bunch of knobs. And that's the pitch.

[00:44:48] Andy Leviss: So that. Actually popped up a question in my mind to use the object based, uh, you know, engine in Q Lab. Does it need to be a mono audio source or what happens if it's a stereo or multi-channel audio file? And how does that interact?

[00:45:03] Sam Kusnetz: In the, um, so there's a new tab in the inspector, the objects tab. And in the objects tab you have a matrix mixer that looks like the levels mixer. Every row is an a channel of audio in the queue, and every column is a. Object that can be addressed by the queue. So if you have a four channel audio queue and you wanna send all four channels to one object, you can go into the objects tab and either route all four of those channels to a map object, or create an object in the queue and route all four of those objects to that queue object. Or if you wanted. Four objects in the queue. You know, one each for the four channels, you could create four queue objects and route one to one and move them each about the system however you like.

[00:45:54] Andy Leviss: And can you lock those, like those individual objects together? Like if I have like a stereo file and I have two, and so I give them like my little bit of stereo spread and then I wanna move them around, can I lock their relationship to each other and drag them together?

[00:46:08] Sam Kusnetz: Uh, at the moment. I don't remember, uh, at, at the moment. The exact locking of that is not straightforward. Um, it's not automatic, but that has been something we've discussed and we do see how that could be easy. Um, I can show you, I could show you, uh, some fairly straightforward ways to copy, paste the movement of one to the other to keep it. Fairly easy to do. Um, we've added some little affordances, which make it really easy for you to like, take a a 2D path, copy it, find a different object, paste the path for that object, and then move the path. Shift the path so that it starts where the other object is. So it becomes a parallel path. Um, it's not

automatic right now, but it is, is super quick to do.

[00:46:59] Andy Leviss: Cool. Um, I feel like we've covered a lot of the like. Technical side of that. I know you guys have some, like some training coming up, uh, down in Baltimore, correct?

[00:47:09] Sam Kusnetz: That's right. We have a Q class coming up, uh, September, uh, three, four, and five. I'm double checking my calendar to make sure that I haven't said something wrong because I have dyscalculia, which means I can't remember numbers properly. Yes. September three, four, and five. Um. September 3, 4, 5. It's a, it's a, it's a three day class, um, at our home theater, the Voxel in Baltimore.

It's open to all. You can sign up on our website, uh, Q Lab app, and there's links to follow for, um, education and training. And, uh, it is designed as a class that assumes little to no Q Lab knowledge at all. Uh, for the first couple of hours of the first day, we do a, a brief refresher or introduction to all of Q. So as long as you are. Comfortable touching a Mac and basically conversant in windows and the mouse and menus and typing on a keyboard, you know, what you need to know to get started. And then, uh, the level of detail that we go into really depends on the folks in the class. So if everyone in the class says, you know, none of us have ever done audio cues before, then we'll go start real basic. And if. The folks in the class say, well, we've all done audio cues, but we don't know about fading, or We don't know about object, of course we don't know about Object audio and Q Lab 'cause it's brand new. So we really tailor the class to the folks in the room. Um, so I encourage folks to consider coming.

Um, there's an admission fee, but we don't want anyone to pass on the class for monetary reasons. So if the ticket price, uh, looks steep to you, please write to Q Class Q-C-L-A-S-S at. Figure 50 three.com. Please write to Q class@figurefiftythree.com and tell us, listen, I'd like to come to the class, but that price doesn't work for me.

And we have a range of discounts which anyone can avail themselves of. It's, it's basically the honor system. Uh, you can pay full price, half price, quarter price, 50 bucks or nothing, and you just decide which price is fair for you to pay. And we believe you. Uh, and then for

folks who are not able to come to Baltimore, you can tune into Q Lab tv. Uh, we, we will be live streaming this class and someone in the room will be monitoring the chat and, uh, typing quick answers. But also folks can ask questions and they will be, uh, moments where I say, are there any questions from the internet? And try to answer those questions directly.

[00:49:39] Andy Leviss: Awesome. You, you answered the question I was gonna ask before I could get the question out, so that's great. Um,

[00:49:46] Sam Kusnetz: The, the last

[00:49:46] Andy Leviss: then also I feel like we should plug our, oh.

[00:49:49] Sam Kusnetz: oh.

I'm sorry. Uh, delay of internet. the

[00:49:52] Andy Leviss: No, no, go ahead. Go ahead.

[00:49:53] Sam Kusnetz: that's worth pointing out is that the live stream, um, will. Once the class is over, I will add, um, subtitles and chapter markers to the livestream and it will remain available indefinitely. So it becomes sort of a, you know, 24 hours worth of Q lab training material sort of in perpetuity. Um,

we were, we were a little stymied with the chapters and subtitles editing session for last year for a couple of reasons. Mostly they were my fault and. But, uh, this year we don't have the same conflict, and so it will be, it will be fully subtitled and chaptered after the fact. And if I can figure out YouTube's new, um, quote unquote AI generated, uh, dubbing in alternate languages, uh, they, it may even be synthetically dubbed, but I don't expect it to do very well with all the technical terminology.

[00:50:44] Andy Leviss: It'll be fun to read though. I almost wish I could read another language just to see how it does.

[00:50:49] Sam Kusnetz: Yeah. El Matrix...

mixer

[00:50:52] Andy Leviss: um, also, I feel like while we're plugging that, we should also plug our mutual friends at the Audio Nerd Book Club are doing their, their annual, semi-annual Console Petting Zoo event at the Voxel.

The day before this, if I'm not mistaken, right.

[00:51:08] Sam Kusnetz: I think that that's right. Yeah. I'm, I'm not actually closely related to setting that up, so I believe you, but

um, I don't have much to say about it.

[00:51:17] Andy Leviss: Yeah, so that's, that's a, yeah, that's as for a free event. The on the second, the day before this class that you can go up and they have a bunch of different consoles you can get your hands on and poke at. Um, I think there's some other talks on like other object oriented stuff going on there. It's like a cool, you know, day full of audio nerdery events.

Um, so I'll link to that on the show notes too. And if you're going for the Q class, might as well go up a day early and, and check that out too.

[00:51:43] Sam Kusnetz: Yeah, absolutely. We really, you know, the, the Voxels a real, um, a real little treasure. And we like, we like it when the community comes together there, and we like to make, we like to make it a home for training. We like to make it a home for coming together for folks in this industry. You know, if we've talked about this before, I think I've heard you talk about it on your podcast and we've talked about it offline, you know. Being a designer, theatrical designer or a, uh, uh, certain kinds of jobs. You know, in a one, you're usually the only one of you on a show, and so you don't get to work with your peers, you know your peers, but your peers are sort of technically your competition mostly, and, and that can be difficult. Socially.

Right. A lot of people get something social out of their work community that we kind of can't get. Exactly. Because, because of that thing. Oh yeah. I'm an A one. I've How many, how many different A ones have you worked with on the same show? Oh, I don't know. One other guy maybe. And that can be isolating. So. These classes on top of being informative, are a great opportunity to sort of be with like-minded folks who do what you do, who you can say like, ah, she knows exactly what I'm talking about and I don't need to explain it, because she does what I do when we're both outside of this class and it's, uh, I recommended for that reason alone.

[00:53:06] Sean Walker: Dude, awesome. Totally. And then you get to find some other cool people to cover for you when you need to bail out.

[00:53:14] Sam Kusnetz: Absolutely.

[00:53:15] Andy Leviss: I almost feel like we should try and wrap this in the next 16 seconds. So we have a 53 minute episode from figure 53.

[00:53:21] Sean Walker: Thank you for I

Heath for letting us do it. Thanks Sam for coming. Thanks RCF. Chat about audio. Kiss the hugs. That's the pod y'all. Bye.

[00:53:28] Andy Leviss: Nailed it. We beat it before 54. Uh, joking aside, is there anything else Sam, you want to add in before I cut? I.

[00:53:35] Sam Kusnetz: No, I feel like I, I feel like I, it's been a really pleasant conversation. It's lovely to talk to you too, and I'm just, I'm just so stoked to have this thing in people's hands so that they can whack their heads against it and see what happens.

Music: “Break Free” by Mike Green