Sam your X32 training is starting to show, but you are exactly right calling Mackie's "VCA" a DCA cause that's what it is. These are no more "voltage control amplifiers" than the man in the moon.
Johnny come lately Mackie haven't earned the right to change 20 yrs. of audio technology to suit their marketing needs. If someone is interested here is a history of VCA's from some of the early developers.
http://www.thatcorp.com/History_of_VCAs.shtml Does any of this remotely resemble what Mackie implemented??
They could also adopt Midas's VCA definition " Variable Control Association". Since VCA is not in Mackie's glossary maybe they're not sure what they've done. One thing they haven't done is update the block diagram on the DL1608, DL806 to reflect MF 3.0 changes. My advise to anyone here commenting on what is and isn't, RTFM at least twice. Of course it would help if the info was correct. Don't get me wrong this manual is leaps and bounds above the prior doc's such as the 1604 series. Interesting is the total lack of any mention of the well debated Channel Trim control and recall. I guess it's not important to them. I may have to agree with them on this but it should still be in the manual explaining it's intended use. I won't be getting to this for at least another 2 weeks because of tests that require MF 2.1.1. so all my info on MF 3.0 is from the manual and posts here.