Any unemployed programmers out there up to the challenge
It seems that a big reason that the Magic Lantern project was successful was that by hacking the Canon 5D, it was possible to turn a ~2000 DSLR camera into something comparable to a ~25K pro video camera. That's a pretty huge payoff, which is going to attract attention and funds from all sorts of people - independent film makers, pro videographers, etc.
I'm not sure how you'd get a similar payoff out of hacking the DL. You'd have to come up with a killer feature that is only available in much more expensive pro audio mixers. Even if you were able to implement everything on the Mackie's user feature request list, you'd still just basically have a smaller form factor PreSonus - which would be great for all of us, but I dont see the pro audio industry getting too excited about it. Maybe there is some killer feature that isnt on the list that would be worth the effort, but I cant see it. For hacking, you'd probably be better off starting out with a couple of XAP800's where you have more I/O and a documented communication protocol. Then you'd just need to focus on doing a nice user interface.
Now if you DID want to hack the DL, the best place to start would be to crack the communication protocol, which you could probably do with a network protocol analyzer like Wireshark and an ethernet hub between the router and DL. This would require a working knowledge of TCP/IP and a lot of tedious work to figure out all of the various command and status message parameters. Not much payoff for an individual that I can see, although if you were a company that builds midi control interfaces, you could probably figure out enough to build a wireless physical fader interace like AbbaAgain wants and maybe sell enough to the theater industry to make the effort worthwhile. You could also write a new IOS app that would substitute for Master Fader, although those would just be cosmetic changes - ie better button locations, maybe an "all outputs" screen, etc. You might even be able to come up with some sort of vitual fader linking. To get features like output PEQs, submix busses, assigning the Aux'es pre/post compression, etc, you need to change the DSP code. Getting into the DSP code would take some real heavy lifting. If WK154 gets around to tearing down his DL unit, then maybe we'll find out what type of DSP and whether Mackie left a JTAG port on the PCB (my guess is no JTAG header for cost reasons, but the traces are probably there to add one).
Bottom line - yes, the DL is probably hackable, but for the effort to payoff ratio, an unemployed programmer would be better off showing up on Mackie's doorstep and volunteer to help with in-house testing of the 1.5 release. If Mackie refuses, stand at the nearest busy intersection with a sign that says "will work for Master Fader v1.5 release" until they relent. Then, when 1.5 releases, said programmer would have (a) a nicer mixer and (b) minor fame among 1000s of DL users, as the person who quit his/her day job to get 1.5 released on time. Said programmer could then spend the next month or two getting free beers in dive bars all over the world before everyone starts complaining about need for 1.6.
PS - now that I can do an FFT of my Aux outputs, I take back what I said about PEQs not being all that useful to me. Now I want PEQs on the outputs. I'd probably take that over grouping now - but what I still want the most is an integrated RTA.
PPS - a more useful hack (for me) would be an IOS hack so that I could forcibly assign 3rd party audio inputs and outputs where I want them, instead of having IOS trying to do it for me.
