PNW Chair Van Browne opened the well attended meeting (30+ participants) by introducing well known soundman David Scheirman, now the Professional Audio Liaison for Lone Wolf. While some of the ever present computer bugs were being worked on, David spoke on the history of computer control of audio systems, and noted the difficulties of having to use seven different computer systems to control your sound system when no standardization was available.

Mark Lacas, President of Lone Wolf, got the Macintosh presentation software running, and spoke on the background of Lone Wolf and the advantages of computer control for sound systems. Originally, he only wanted to make his own studio work more efficiently. He went on to show how a "virtual nightclub" sound system could be shown on the computer, and how easily control could be custom programmed by moving on-screen faders and meters. Thus, control can be very simple and limited, say, for the bartender to run, or very complex for the engineer.

Network chips for the hardware are pretty cheap and efficient now, with much higher speeds coming up very soon. An example of a good, simple engineering idea is their "sync-blink" LED on each unit, which blinks when on-line - and doesn't if its not on the net, making troubleshooting easy.

After a short intermission, Dr. Dean Jacobs, Lone Wolf Senior Scientist, ran his Powerpoint slideshow while speaking on networking for sound systems, industry standards, and AES SC-10.

Conventional computer control usually means a master computer controlling everything, whereas the Lone Wolf MediaLink bus network means everything talks to everything. This kind of architecture can be applied to much more than audio systems, and may have applications in multimedia and air traffic control, to name a few.

Bridges to other networking systems are not entirely clear yet, nor is the AES SC-10 complete.

Many questions were asked by the audience, such as the viability of the fiber optic cabling (here, David Scheirman pulls out his gag "XLR to fiberoptic cable adapter" to get a laugh), the size of systems tried to date (a 64 amp system for the Jimmy Buffet tour was mentioned, and a diagram was shown of a complex Lone Wolf interoffice system), and compatibility of certain CAD programs for designing Medialink systems.

A final question was posed - will non-computerized audio equipment be gone in 10 years?