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May 2012

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Mixing Console Roundup

Analog or Digital? Both need functionality and flexibility.

by Mark Johnson

Analog or digital? That's the question for the ages, at least as far as mixing consoles are concerned. While budget is still the primary determining factor, other considerations that could sway the decision one way or the other include weighing the need for presets or saved settings, and the technical capabilities of the sound team.

Let's face it, analog or digital, a mixing console can be pretty intimidating to the uninitiated. While in most cases a digital console offers less in the way of knobs and buttons, since one knob may control multiple functions, the "computerness" of it can cause people to shy away. And just the sight of "all those knobs and switches" on an analog mixer can be too much for other folks to wrap their heads around.

In many cases, it's a question of what your technical team is accustomed to: Are members of your team part of the digital generation, navigating the touch screens on their iPods with ease, or are they more comfortable with knobs and buttons?

Whatever the choice, these days, functionality and flexibility is the name of the game and many live mixing consoles, both analog and digital, offer USB or Firewire I/O (input/output) for recording as well as DSP (digital signal processing) for sophisticated on-board effects.

Analog consoles offer dedicated gain, EQ controls and aux sends per channel strip and despite their imposing appearance due to all the controls mounted on the mixing surface (if you break it down, it's just the same thing repeated 16 or more times), they are generally pretty user-friendly. For those on very tight budgets, you are afforded quite a bit of bang for the buck. The biggest downside is that basically anybody can come and change your settings, so you may have gotten everything absolutely dialed in on Wednesday's rehearsal but by the time Sunday morning arrives, the youth has had their event, there was a wedding, and then a funeral, and oh, the little kid whose mom was volunteering in the office for the day thought all those colored knobs were really cool and he just had to touch them.... And there goes your perfect mix. It's pretty easy, although it can get more tedious as the number of inputs increases, to get some board tape (also available as artist's tape) and indicate your settings directly on the console. Alternatively, some manufacturers provide sheets of paper pre-printed with the console surface so you can mark your settings on that.

The digital counterparts provide the ability to store your settings (and everyone else's, which make it a great benefit if you frequently have touring acts at your church). Once you get everything dialed in you can save it and generally only have to make minor adjustments during the service or event. Many digital mixers provide a central control area with access to all the functions (and then some) that you would find on a channel strip of an analog console.

The blessing and the curse of digital boards is that DSP is relatively inexpensive, so even a basic digital console will be laden with features, many of them you may never use. But the feature you would never consider invoking in your service might be the very thing the sound person at the church down the street has been looking for. So while a digital mixer can seem somewhat overwhelming, the basic functionality is still there and the basic controls are still there. Because of the ability to store your settings, you do more work upfront with a digital console, setting the mixes and planning what the cues or scenes will consist of.

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Mark Johnson is an independent technical trainer/writer based in Crockett, Calif., and former editor of Sound & Video Contractor and Church Production magazines. He can be reached at mjohnson6286@sbcglobal.net.