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Allen & Heath iLive-144 at Ransdell Chapel, Campbellsville University in Kentucky. (Photo courtesy of Andre Tomaz)
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digidesign venue d-show, at Shades Mountain Baptist Church, Birmingham, Ala. (Photo courtesy of Rick Shimer)
The choice of a digital mixing console for a new house of worship installation or as an upgrade from an all-analog sound system must be made with careful consideration.
Essential factors in this plan will include the present and future production details, the level of expertise among the technical staff and the style of the worship activities.
So what separates the mediocre digital mixers from the top quality models? Price isn’t always an accurate indicator, but noting the price can put you in the ballpark.
Product Manager Benjamin Olswang with Mackie in Woodinville, Wash., has this advice on the vital points of digital mixers: “The quality of the analog-to-digital (AD) and digital-to-analog (DA) converters and the sample rates the mixer supports are important specifications to be aware of for more than one reason. First off, if the converters support a 96 kHz sample rate, then the bandwidth of the audio the console can reproduce is much wider. This means a more accurate and smooth high end because the higher the sample rate, the higher the frequency that can be reproduced.”
Richard McKernan, director of sales, U.S. western region for Euphonix of Palo Alto, Calif., says that as the price of digital mixers goes up, you’re basically paying for more CPU cycles. “The most significant specification difference between low- to mid-priced digital mixers and top quality models is the processing power that exists in the console (for EQs, I/Os, dynamics, etc.). In mixing boards, you get what you pay for; that is, the more expensive and higher quality the equipment, the faster and more powerful the engine.”
Taidus Vallandi with Group One Ltd. of Farmingdale,N.Y., U.S. distributor for DiGiCo, says the secret’s in the processing. “The high and low end consoles used to be separated by the type of processing used. Top quality consoles have always used floating point processors that are much more expensive and deliver much higher processing accuracy—sound quality. Fair consoles mostly used fixed point processing that, with a much lower cost, provide less processing accuracy—lower sound quality. Digico SD8 has changed this by providing high end (floating point processing) in a low/mid price range console. Generally the difference has been in features like the amount of faders, number of channels/buses, on board effects and digital snake.”
Technical Director Rob Clark of Allen & Heath in Penryn, Cornwall, UK, stresses the overall quality aspect of components that work together. “Sound quality is not simply based on spec figures such as noise floor, distortion, bit depths and sampling rates. Converter circuits, pre-amplifier, DSP algorithm and power supply design are fundamental in designing a good sounding mixer. For example, investing in higher sampling rate processing does not necessarily produce better sound quality—it’s the whole system design that counts. Similarly, designing a great-sounding mic pre-amp and passing it through a badly designed DSP algorithm will not produce good results,” says Clark. “Allen & Heath has invested a lot of time addressing these issues, from power supply interaction with converters, to modeling top quality analog compressors in the digital domain.”
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Bennett Liles is the media technician on an Atlanta-area university campus where he oversees and maintains an inventory of data projectors and video cameras, along with digital and analog sound mixers, most of which are in daily use. He can be reached at bliles@gawebcasting.com. .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
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