Audiofusion currently works only on Apple computers and devices, though they are in the final stages of developing the system for Android.
We've been controlling digital mixers with remote devices for many years now, using wi-fi to dial in a mix from the sanctuary or get our in-ear blend perfect from the stage. One fairly obvious capability has been missing in most cases, however: monitoring the audio on the device itself. How many of us have wished they could solo an input to their earbuds while mixing a church service, or use the iPhone itself for their personal in-ear monitoring on stage?
These applications are designed to allow you to use your phone as a wireless receiver for your in-ear monitors.
The Audiofusion Platform aims to make this a reality with the Performer, SoundCaster and Director applications that are designed to allow you to use your phone as a wireless receiver for your in-ear monitors. These pieces of software work with a digital mixer, computer, wi-fi router and mobile devices (smart phones and tablets) to create a private network for audio monitoring.
The SoundCaster software runs on a computer attached to a digital mixer. It allows you to select and label channels from the digital mixer, making those available to the worship musicians on-stage. The Performer app runs on the musicians' portable device, allowing them to both control and hear the audio from the mixer. Performer allows the musicians to select which inputs their mix includes, adjust level and pan, customize naming, and even tap a "panic" button if something is going wrong. The last piece, Director, is optional. It allows one person with a mobile device (i.e. tablet) to set up and monitor mixes for others. Even without a dedicated monitor engineer, Director could come in handy for setting up monitor mixes in advance of the actual service or event.
Such a system flies or flops based on the quality and integrity of the wi-fi network, which is why Audiofusion recommends a dedicated wi-fi router with no other traffic. It's also advisable to turn off all other apps, mute alerts, and even get off the cell network. You don't want an incoming call, OS update or alarm interrupting your performance.
There's a reason musicians across the world aren't using wi-fi and mobile devices for their monitoring: there are so many things that can go wrong. Wi-fi signals can be spotty and prone to interference. Apps can crash. Mobile devices can lock up, or batteries run down. We look forward to testing the Audiofusion platform for stability, and also to see what "best practices" they encourage to remove as many variables as possible.
Audiofusion's real-time audio technology has been awarded four patents with one more pending.
Audio latency is another issue every monitoring system has to overcome. Dedicated audio networking (Dante, for example) is designed to minimize delay from hardware and software, keeping it well under the threshold where it can be perceived. Traditional wi-fi hardware and mobile devices aren't designed for low-latency audio monitoring, so we're eager to see how Audiofusion's "real-time" audio claim translates to actual latency numbers. We suspect the 16-channel limit may help the system achieve low latency figures.
Audiofusion currently works only on Apple computers and devices, though they are in the final stages of developing the system for Android. As of the time of writing, Director was in beta testing. We look forward to putting their software through its paces to see how easy it is to set up and use in a live setting. Another consideration we'll explore is how well SoundCaster works with other software on the main computer, such as a multi-track recording application.
Audiofusion has an interesting pricing model, where each performer (or "connection") costs just $99. This is a one-time fee, and connections are portable between devices and can be reused and reassigned as needed. This makes Audiofusion less expensive than most hardware-based personal monitoring systems. As always, we'll keep a close eye on value during our testing.
Audiofusion has been developing their software for about five years, with a Kickstarter campaign currently going to help with Android development. The work of a two-man team, Audiofusion's real-time audio technology has been awarded four patents with one more pending. Will this software approach change the game for wireless monitoring? We look forward to finding out.
Watch www.churchproduction.com for our full review of the Audiofusion platform in the coming months.
