Control via MIDI (or some other computer system) isn't 'automation', it's merely 'remote control', or presetting the mixer to a previous stored condition.
If you are defining an "automated mixer" as "a device which makes good mixing choices on its own" then I agree with you 100% (which is what you seem to be saying). However, I would contend that nobody really expects a magic sound engineer in a box, and that "automation" in pro audio just means that certain tasks can be preprogrammed. In the context of the industry the term is IMO correct.
An example would be for mixing down to master a CD, at a particular point in the song you might need to add an effect, or alter the gain on one particular track for a time, by storing these changes you can make the mixing down semi-automated.
I would have to call that fully automated. When I mix in Cubase and master in WaveLab I use the automation all the time (and I've used it live at times as well). I wouldn't consider it "semi-" automated just because I, and not the computer or mixer, made the original decisions about what needed to change at which points in time.
The reason I consider it fully automated is that once I've made my choices, I can just sit back and listen while the multitrack is bounced to a stereo pair--and all the mixing, FX/EQ changes, etc happens with no intervention from me.
What I consider to be semi-automated would be more along the lines of what my 01V offers, without the benefit of outboard control from a sequencer or production software: 99 scenes which may be recalled at defined times, but without the near-infinite control I can get by controlling it from Cubase or similar (or a MIDI sequencer).
Also, if you were doing live PA for a big tour, you might store basic settings for each song, modify them doing the sound check at each venue, then select that setting for each song, and manually tweak from there.
Yes, I've done that more than once. . .
Or you might just write it down on a sheet of paper, and do it all manually
. . .and that, too. For live gigs, usually in the end what I've compromised on is your first suggestion, though (if I could bring the 01V *and* I have time beforehand to get it set up right). Either way (paper or computer memory) it is always of course necessary to change things to match the house sound system, monitoring, and room sound.
The last thing you want on a live gig is unreliability, or the mixer doing something strange on it's own.
Agreed 100%. Luckily decent rigs don't do anything you don't tell them to do--at least, after the first few software revisions. The trick is in being confident that you've given them the right instructions.
That said, if you walk into a gig and the sound system uses a decent analog board (say maybe a Mackie or SoundCraft), it's pretty obvious how to set up the busses and monitoring etc. With a digital board it's not always obvious at all unless you happen to know the board.
AGC is absolutely the last thing you want on a mixer, particularly one used for a live performance. If a mixer ever had such a thing, the engineer would turn it off before he did anything else.
Actually there are quite a few of these things out there:
**broken link removed**
But again the definition for these things is somewhat different--normally they are just to automatically mute and unmute (sometimes smoothly) audio inputs according to their signal levels. I wouldn't expect anybody to think that they are a kind of magic box you can plug your band into and have it come out sounding good.
This reminds me of a gig we played in Tuscon AZ. I may have been the first drummer in that sound guy's history to ask him to "please take the gate off the kick drum". The turkey wasn't using his ears; he was hoping that some default settings on a piece of gear could do his job for him. So my softer kicks wouldn't come through, but if I hit it even a little harder, suddenly it was just BOOM BOOM BOOM.
That little anecdote is just to point out that in essence I agree with you--there is no hardware (or software) available which will replace a good sound tech's ears and experience (as the saying goes: "ears and years").
Automation (in my opinion) means completely automatic action, not just presetting to a previous condition.
There's the difference between our definitions then (as I mentioned a few paragraphs back). I don't expect "automation" to mean "the machine decides how things should sound", since that's never been the definition in the industry and would require either magic or science fiction. "Automation" in audio has always simply meant that various parameters can be controlled in real time (or near enough) by previously recorded or programmed instructions.
Has the OP even considered the cost of more than a mile of cable?.
I don't know. If he wanted decent audio cable for that distance--including monitoring, and proper hardware on each end to drive and receive it--that would be a fair chunk of cash indeed.
Anyway, thanks for the clarification. I guess I have to disagree with you on the meaning of "automated mixer" though, since the meaning of "automated mixer" isn't (AFAIK) generally taken to mean "magic sound engineer in a box" but "mixer which can replay a recorded set of instructions". I agree that "automatic mixers" are not quite what they might sound like, but then I don't know that Joe Q. Public really thinks much about the difference between "automatic" and "automated".
Torben