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May 2012

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Audio Focus: Analog Strikes Back

A survey of current technologies offered on analog mixing consoles

by Bruce Borgerson

One of the most important AV equipment purchase decisions your church will make is whether to switch to a digital audio console or upgrade to a newer analog design. With all the recent hoopla about digital, it might seem like a foregone conclusion. Digital is the future, so get with it!

Hold on. Not so fast. Depending on a) the production complexity of your worship services, b) your equipment budget, and c) the technical expertise of your production staff and/or volunteers, you might be better off upgrading within the analog domain.

First, let’s review the recognized advantages of digital consoles. Certainly they offer pushbutton reconfiguration of “everything” to instantly accommodate different worship services and events.  Also, in most cases, you also get extraordinary on-board signal processing, with options limited only by the console’s DSP power. And many digital consoles offer seamless integration into multi-track audio recording and complex video post-production environments.

However, those benefits could go beyond the real-world needs of your church. What’s more, in many worship sound situations, analog offers its own set of advantages:

More channels per dollar – As a rule of thumb, you can get nearly double the microphone input channels on an analog board as on a digital counterpart of roughly comparable quality. True, the analog board will take up more space, but your “bonus” channels can be dedicated to specific uses so that they never (or at least rarely) have to be re-set for different services or events. Familiar layout and operation – With analog consoles, what you see is what you do. All controls are dedicated to one channel and one task.  Nothing requires programming, and there are no menu trees to navigate. Also, with a few exceptions, basic control layout changes little from manufacturer to manufacturer. Learn one and you’ve learned them all!

Simplified troubleshooting – Although newer digital consoles are essentially as reliable as their analog counterparts, when something does go amiss a relatively high level of expertise may be needed to get things straight. With analog boards, troubleshooting tends to be more straightforward. Also, analog failures tend to be isolated: if one channel fails, usually the others remain unaffected.

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Bruce Borgerson networks around the industry via Wavelength Communications while monitoring technologies at the First United Methodist Church of Ashland, Ore.