My First Remote Mix with ARCA

1. My First Remote Mix with ARCA Every engineer remembers the first show with a new piece of gear. For me, that moment was ARCA’s first real-world test. It wasn’t polished. It wasn’t sleek. Honestly, it was barely holding together. But that’s exactly why it mattered. Because even in its rawest, messiest state, it proved what it could be. The night before Singapore, it looked like a science project. ARCA was nowhere near ready. I would like to say here as well, that it wasn’t anyone’s fault. With any type of product development, you are bound to hit snags, rush deadlines, etc. It’s all part of it. In short, we were hand delivered the alpha prototype to our studio the night before we were traveling. We had to tear the entire thing apart and rewire it from scratch, by hand, with no playbook. By now, however, we were over a year into the idea and design, and we knew what needed to be done. Components didn’t fit exactly right. Screw holes were a bit off here and there. We decided to save the universal power supply for the next iteration because we just needed the box to start working, so the box was STUFFED to say the least. It was us and our development partners, working against the clock, to hit a deadline. The pressure was real because the accountability was real and we weren’t going to send it out unless it could stand on its own. That first box rattled. It was rough. Nothing about it felt finished. But it did the job. It delivered the mix without a broadcast truck, without a mountain of gear. And in that moment, one quiet, clean broadcast mix from the other side of the world. We knew we were onto something. The version you know now? Worlds away.ARCA’s current form is locked, clean, and stable. The power supply is bulletproof. The routing is precise. It’s as dependable as the engineers who carry it. But every time I walk into a show with one in my hand, I think about that first rig. The one that taught us everything we didn’t know we needed to fix (and some we knew). It’s more than a red box.It’s the product of sleepless nights, busted prototypes, risky tests, and the belief that we could build something better. Not in theory. Not in CAD. But in the field. In the pressure. In the chaos of a live event. This blog is originally published here: https://protostream.live/engineers-diary-my-first-remote-mix-with-arca/