Controlling your DAW from the vocal booth
Is your vocal booth/room separate from your control room? Do you find it hard/impossible to record your own vocal takes without the help of someone to man your controls? Do you have a iPhone/iPod Touch? Well then I have a solution for you.
There have been an enormous amount of apps released for the iPhone/touch in the few years it has been around. Some of these apps have been specifically geared towards us audio engineer types. As mentioned on Create Digital Music, if you are working with Protools you can get ProRemote to control your mixer for about $40 for the lite version and about $150 for pro. If you are using some other DAW on PC you can pick up a copy of Intelliremote to push your buttons from the iPhone/touch.
In order to get this to work you must first install the server application on your PC. This app runs about $25. You also need the client software on your iPhone/touch. Once you have to two programs set up it is just a matter of plugging in your PC's address into the iPhone's options and setting up a profile for your DAW. It only takes a few moments to map Intelliremote's buttons to those of your DAW. Though this software is not made specifically for use with DAWs it is well suited for the job. Among it's great features are the ability to use the device as a mouse or keyboard. Also the iPhone can remember up to four different computers so you can use it with your laptop, desktop and also as a remote for your media center.
I have been using it to free me from the record button of my rig for about a month now and I can say that I am a lot less put off at the prospect of having to record myself now.