Cars, cosmetics, wine—we often give Europe credit for some very high-quality exports. UK-based Digico has earned a similar reputation for quality in the high-end digital mixer market. For the last 15 years, Digico has made inroads in the touring, corporate and permanent install markets. Digico quality hasn't come cheap, however, with their most-popular models bearing price tags of $30,000, $70,000, even some six-digit figures.
With the S-series mixers, Digico is seeking to make customers out of those folks on much smaller budgets. We tested out the S31 model ($9,295 list), a compact mixer targeting houses of worship, theaters and smaller touring companies. The S21 ($6,995) has one less fader bank and screen but identical features.
The Goods
The S31 is a 40-channel mixer with 24 analog inputs and 12 analog outputs, all on rear-mounted XLR jacks. Its interface includes three large touchscreens, each with 10 touch-sensitive encoder knobs and faders. Add one assignable fader on the right-hand side of the mixer, and you have 31 faders (and a model number). Toss in just a few more dedicated buttons and knobs, and that's the whole interface.
The S31 is sturdily built, with a solid feel and excellent metal work. It has no external light connector to illuminate the control surface, because it needs none. Instead, 10 dimmable LEDs mounted above the screens shine down on the mixer and make it easy (and fun) to operate in darkness.
The S31's back panel holds its analog I/O plus a host of digital connectors. These include UB/MADI for DAW recording and playback, DVI monitor output (for a fourth overview display), Ethernet, dual USB, GPIO in/out, word clock in/out and AES/EBU in/out. The S31 also boasts a pair of Digico Multichannel Interface DMI (DMI) option card slots that allow the mixer to connect to everything but a fax machine. DMI cards are available for Dante, Hydra 2, MADI, Aviom's A-Net, ADC, SoundGrid and other protocols. If you need the S31 to talk to some other digital gadget, odds are it can.
Digital mixers are settling into a similar complement of on-board processing, and the S31 stays pretty true to the norm. Each of the S31's inputs and output busses has a compressor, gate, high- and low-pass filter and four-band EQ. Assignable effects include 16 32-band EQs, four multi-band compressors and four DigiTube processors. Eight additional effects processors can be fed from aux sends or inserted at the channel level.
Signal routing is one of the S31's strong suits, with a complement of 46 busses. These include 32 busses as 16 stereo or mono monitor mixes or effects sends, a 10x8 matrix, two mono or stereo solo busses and the main stereo bus. Whereas some mixers impose arbitrary limits on what input can be routed where, the S31 seems to offer nearly unlimited routing from its input control screen. This flexibility will be appreciated in more complex applications.
Ten control groups allow VCA-style fader moves or group muting. A “gang” feature is an extension of the typical stereo pair concept, allowing you to link multiple channels so a single parameter change affects all. The S31 gives you many options for routing on the output side, and effective control of multiple channels on the input side.
Where are the controls?
At first glance it appears the S31 can't possibly have enough controls. Functional minimalism seems to be the goal here, and the approach works because of those three large screens. Each screen and row of knobs and faders makes a package—the functions of the knobs and faders depend on the screen's mode. There aren't even LCD labels or “scribble strips” near the faders. Want to know what a fader or knob is controlling at that moment? Look at the screen above it.
Although it will display a multi-channel overview like the left-hand screens, the right-hand screen also functions like a master or “detail” screen. Channel-specific parameters appear here, as well as effects controls, global setup functions and other crucial displays. This screen has an extra set of six knobs next to it to adjust parameters. These also change function as the display switches modes. The top knob, for example, may adjust send level in one mode and compressor threshold the next.
Color plays a large role in all Digico interfaces. Rings around every rotary encoder change color based on what that knob will affect. Pan, bus send level, effect parameter—each has a different color. This color is echoed onto the nearby screen, giving you a visual clue as to what the knob will accomplish. You can push the S31's rotary encoders as well as spin them, giving each knob three functions: rotate, push, or push and rotate. These three control modes are implemented reasonably effectively--but not perfectly--across the mixer. Sometimes I expected a push to accomplish something (disable an EQ band, for example), but it did not.
Having a mixer that works more like a computer has its benefits. Because everything is just pixels on a screen, any information that's relevant can be displayed. Bring up an auxiliary send bus, for example, and a list shows every input that's routed to that aux bus. Display an input, and you'll see a list of every bus or output that channel is routed to. If the list extends past the display window, you can drag with your finger to scroll. Nifty.
This richness of information and color is consistent across the S31's interface. The various screens are well-conceived, clear and pleasing to look at. Many low-end mixers lack the graphics processing power in their displays for a fast refresh. Not so the S31. Its displays work as nice as they look, with the touch response spot-on and screen updates brisk.
I did take issue with a few aspects of the S31's interface. The touch-sensitive rotary encoders seem a bit wobbly and the solo and mute buttons above each fader feel. er…, common. One of the mute buttons didn't function at all initially and required multiple taps to bring it to life. Though country of origin isn't always an indicator of component or build quality, it's worth pointing out that these down-market S-series Digico mixers are assembled in China.
The S31's faders may also cause users some initial frustration. Digico incorporates a feature from its higher-end SD series consoles called Protect Mode. This means the faders fight back, even returning to their original position if you don't address them properly. It's designed to prevent a falling script or any other object from moving a fader unless it feels the capacitance of your finger. So you have to give a gentle push straight down to register your finger before moving the fader. Forget sliding a fader up from below with your fingernail, or even moving several at a time with the side of a finger. As someone who rarely moves a fader accidentally, I'd like the ability to adjust or remove the ballistics in software. A Digico representative says this capability exists in the SD-series mixers, and should be working its way down to the S-series in a future software update.
No Detectable Accent
Other than the spelling of “centre,” I detected nothing overtly British about the S31's behavior or sonics. It has a beautifully transparent and open sound, one not identified with any particular continent. The S31 converts and processes at 96 kHz and imposes no color of its own, giving the sound engineer a blank canvas on which to create. That's the way it should be.
Speaking of transparency, the S31's four-band EQ is a marvel of smoothness and subtlety. Some EQs make a profound statement with just a few dB of change, often as much a product of artifacts as actual gain change in the affected band. Depending on the input, the S31's EQ can remain nearly inaudible until you've achieved several dB of filtering. Adjectives that sprang to mind included “pristine,” “musical,” “smooth as butter,” “no harshness.”
The S31's compressor is similarly excellent, though it is capable of adding color and a bit of grit or edge to the sound. I enjoyed the compressor's character on everything from highly compressed (“nuked”) drums to subtle vocal leveling. Never did I find the compressor to dull or distort the sound. The mixer's noise gate was also very good. Gate key filtering works well, using a spiffy vertical frequency analyzer and sliding HPF/LPF controls.
The S31's multi-band compressor works well, but you can use just four channels of this effect across the whole board. The DigiTube effect has the same four-channel limitation, which may be a source of great angst for S31 users when they hear how good it sounds. This rich tube effect can go from subtle enhancement to dirty overdrive, delivering loads of character along the way. If I were an S31 user, I would be wishing for many more DigiTube processors (as some higher-end Digico mixers offer).
Eight effects processors work as send- or insert-style effects. Send effects include reverb and mono delay; the sole insert effect here is a multi-band enhancer. Those three effects types are all the S31 offers currently—no stereo delay; no modulation effects like chorus, flange or phaser; no pitch shift or pitch correction; no other exotic algorithms.
Thankfully, the three effects sound very good right out of the box. Most notable are the S31's reverbs, which cover a nice range from sparse and spacious to more dense and aggressive. The reverb and delay also have the same cool sliding HPF/LPF controls and frequency display as the gate.
The Verdict
The S31 has many features we didn't have space to touch on in this review, including a well-conceived scene automation system, DAW record/playback interface, custom fader banks, ubiquitous metering and more. At least one important feature was still unavailable at the time of this review, however: a remote tablet app. Thankfully, the S-series iPad app was recently revealed at an international trade show and will be released to the public soon.
As I tested the S31, I couldn't shake the feeling that Digico was holding back features either to maintain a price point or protect its higher-end mixers. For example, the S31 will mix 40 mono or stereo channels regardless of what other interfaces you attach. A channel count of at least 64 seems more appropriate. Just four DigiTube effects and four multi-band dynamics? They should double both. Just three effects types? Let's have a dozen. While we weren't given specifics, we're told that both channel capability and effects options will be addressed in future software updates.
The S31 was a pleasure to test, and will be a pleasure to use. It has a colorful, intuitive interface, great flexibility, and support for a wide array of digital audio networking protocols. It also sounds great. If you can work with its limitations, the S31 is a class act.
