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Author Topic: Digico S21/S31  (Read 23450 times)

Branimir Bozak

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Re: Digico S21/S31
« Reply #10 on: August 24, 2017, 06:06:36 PM »

Have been working on S31 a lot, with the stagebox.

The S21/31 sound amazing. Headroom for days, excellent summing.
On the other hand, the compressor is still before the gate in the chain (!?), it's too much touchscreen action going on, with the updates - the screen is more responsive, eq is okay, reverbs are okay, multibands are of course great, digitubes - great, there are also some little addons like enhancher...

If you can live with the workflow - it blows out of the water all the price rivals - x32, m32, Si, GLD... SOUNDWISE! It just sounds big.
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Dave Bednarski

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Re: Digico S21/S31
« Reply #11 on: August 24, 2017, 07:56:07 PM »

The order of the EQ and dynamics can be toggled on a per channel basis (including bus/groups/master/aux/matrix).  This was fixed with the latest firmware release - v2.0

2.0 also added stereo width and balance controls to the input processing on all things stereo.  Disable master mute and added a nice way to backup an entire user partition.  Included minor bug fixes.  Expanded the channel count to 48 flexi.

Firmware can be downloaded @ http://www.digico.biz/docs/about/software_1.shtml

I'd also report that the UI continues to get snappier with each firmware update.

There are two user groups for Digico on Facebook that are fantastic if your looking for more focused discussion or find yourself in a panic/pinch for near real time community support.
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Spenser Hamilton

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Re: Digico S21/S31
« Reply #12 on: August 25, 2017, 02:13:12 PM »

I really liked the S21 & 31 but I'm not sure it fair to compare them to the dLive ... if you check out the spec's the dLIve is slightly more powerful than an SD10!

We had the C3500 in for a demo at the theatre, it was a great board but no guest engineers wanted to use it. On one show it got pulled from FOH in favour of an X32, I shrugged my shoulders and used it for monitors that night.

We ended up going with an SD9 with D2 Rack for the theatre, I sold my M32 and bought an S21 w/ D Rack for myself.
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Chris Eddison

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Re: Digico S21/S31
« Reply #13 on: September 02, 2017, 05:11:02 AM »

Quick question for folks using the S21/31 - how do you find the scribble strips being part of the display rather than being the more conventional LCD's set in to the console's surface? It's hard to tell just from photos, but to my eyes they seem a little far away from their associated faders. Same with having the meters on screen rather than in the surface itself.
I mix theatre - a lot of it just pushing faders rather than using scene recalls as it's often un-rehearsed or one-off stuff where i'm thrown a script and have to mix it. Finding faders quickly is therefore a big deal for me. Do the faders seem to just fall to hand under their labels or do you find there's just a bit more time needed to trace down from the label to the fader?
How good is the scene recall? I realise at this price point it's never going to be as good as a big Digico, let alone one running the T software. It's a bit of a frustration (pretty much across the board) that manufacturers don't give much detail in their literature about the abilities of the scene recalls. Can it do reassignment of channels to DCA's on a per-scene basis? Can it change the labelling on the DCA's per scene too? 
I'm considering a move on from my Roland M480, which has done me incredible service but is just a bit lacking in the scene recall - specifically the per-scene DCA reassignment and also because it lacks scribble strips so whatever you do in a recall has to work with tape labels. I nearly went for an M5000 as it seemed the logical step with me already having lots of REAC I/O, but I happened to play with one at a trade show and then noticed that a scene recall takes a couple of seconds to process - way too long for theatre. I'd probably have bought one on the strength of the literature and demo videos (which didn't show a scene being recalled) had it not been for this, so i'm very glad I got to play with it hands on.
DLive looks very interesting, especially as they seem open to including some theatre-friendly scene features including the tracking that they've just added to the latest software update. I'm watching the brand with interest at the minute.
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Kevin Maxwell

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Re: Digico S21/S31
« Reply #14 on: September 02, 2017, 12:51:15 PM »

Quick question for folks using the S21/31 - how do you find the scribble strips being part of the display rather than being the more conventional LCD's set in to the console's surface? It's hard to tell just from photos, but to my eyes they seem a little far away from their associated faders. Same with having the meters on screen rather than in the surface itself.
I mix theatre - a lot of it just pushing faders rather than using scene recalls as it's often un-rehearsed or one-off stuff where i'm thrown a script and have to mix it. Finding faders quickly is therefore a big deal for me. Do the faders seem to just fall to hand under their labels or do you find there's just a bit more time needed to trace down from the label to the fader?
How good is the scene recall? I realise at this price point it's never going to be as good as a big Digico, let alone one running the T software. It's a bit of a frustration (pretty much across the board) that manufacturers don't give much detail in their literature about the abilities of the scene recalls. Can it do reassignment of channels to DCA's on a per-scene basis? Can it change the labelling on the DCA's per scene too? 
I'm considering a move on from my Roland M480, which has done me incredible service but is just a bit lacking in the scene recall - specifically the per-scene DCA reassignment and also because it lacks scribble strips so whatever you do in a recall has to work with tape labels. I nearly went for an M5000 as it seemed the logical step with me already having lots of REAC I/O, but I happened to play with one at a trade show and then noticed that a scene recall takes a couple of seconds to process - way too long for theatre. I'd probably have bought one on the strength of the literature and demo videos (which didn't show a scene being recalled) had it not been for this, so i'm very glad I got to play with it hands on.
DLive looks very interesting, especially as they seem open to including some theatre-friendly scene features including the tracking that they've just added to the latest software update. I'm watching the brand with interest at the minute.

I have used the Roland M400 for theater and I understand that the lack of scribble strips being a problem. I use Palladium from https://www.chsounddesign.com/ for scene management. I have been using the Midas M32 and have used 2 of them for some shows. Palladium can control 3 mixers at a time. And it can work over OSC (Open Sound Control) and Midi and a combination of the 2. I helped write the mixer file for the M400 and I could probably write one easily for the M480 if I could get my hands on one to play with. The Midi implementation on the Roland is very good. And it looks like all of the things you want to do with DCA reassignments is something that Palladium can do with an M480.

I also understand that the DiGiCo consoles uses OSC and I would love to write a mixer file for the S21 and the S31 for Palladium but I would definitely need a console to do that. But since DiGiCo has its own theater software I don’t know how cooperative they would be. But maybe if there is no plan to make the theater software version for the S21 or S31 maybe they would be open to that.     
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Michael Thompson

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Re: Digico S21/S31
« Reply #15 on: September 02, 2017, 01:25:49 PM »

Quick question for folks using the S21/31 - how do you find the scribble strips being part of the display rather than being the more conventional LCD's set in to the console's surface? It's hard to tell just from photos, but to my eyes they seem a little far away from their associated faders. Same with having the meters on screen rather than in the surface itself.
I mix theatre - a lot of it just pushing faders rather than using scene recalls as it's often un-rehearsed or one-off stuff where i'm thrown a script and have to mix it. Finding faders quickly is therefore a big deal for me. Do the faders seem to just fall to hand under their labels or do you find there's just a bit more time needed to trace down from the label to the fader?
How good is the scene recall? I realise at this price point it's never going to be as good as a big Digico, let alone one running the T software. It's a bit of a frustration (pretty much across the board) that manufacturers don't give much detail in their literature about the abilities of the scene recalls. Can it do reassignment of channels to DCA's on a per-scene basis? Can it change the labelling on the DCA's per scene too? 
I'm considering a move on from my Roland M480, which has done me incredible service but is just a bit lacking in the scene recall - specifically the per-scene DCA reassignment and also because it lacks scribble strips so whatever you do in a recall has to work with tape labels. I nearly went for an M5000 as it seemed the logical step with me already having lots of REAC I/O, but I happened to play with one at a trade show and then noticed that a scene recall takes a couple of seconds to process - way too long for theatre. I'd probably have bought one on the strength of the literature and demo videos (which didn't show a scene being recalled) had it not been for this, so i'm very glad I got to play with it hands on.
DLive looks very interesting, especially as they seem open to including some theatre-friendly scene features including the tracking that they've just added to the latest software update. I'm watching the brand with interest at the minute.

I personally haven't had any problem with the scribble strips being where they are.  One of the things I really like about the on-screen metering is that it shows you pre and post meters all the time.  I do sometimes wish they were larger or had any sort of value associated with them.  It's just color and it's a smooth transition so it's pretty much impossible to tell how many db it really is unless you solo it, but also the s21/31 have so much headroom that you can pin it in the red not notice.

The S21/31 don't support OSC or Midi at this time (not to my knowledge anyway).  I've made that request to them several times. Unfortunately this means integration with QLab, Palladium, Live Professor, etc. is a no-go.  If you are only using the console for snapshots, it's fairly robust.  I haven't tried changing DCA routing as part of that, but I can try it next time I have the console set up.  I'll see how it handles them and how fast it will do it.

I remedy the above situation by using the built in UB-madi or additional cards for dante/soundgrid/madi and run inserts through my computer where I can use Qlab/waves/live professor, etc. to process or mute channels as needed.  Even with the built in UB-madi and macbook pro I can get the rout trip latency down to 4-6ms (depending on sample rate).  It can be even less with the other options.
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Rob Spence

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Re: Digico S21/S31
« Reply #16 on: September 02, 2017, 03:26:44 PM »


I personally haven't had any problem with the scribble strips being where they are.  One of the things I really like about the on-screen metering is that it shows you pre and post meters all the time.  I do sometimes wish they were larger or had any sort of value associated with them.  It's just color and it's a smooth transition so it's pretty much impossible to tell how many db it really is unless you solo it, but also the s21/31 have so much headroom that you can pin it in the red not notice.



So, what they did was set the red to be ~ 6dB lower than other folk? When you run out of ones you are done no matter who builds it.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD
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Michael Thompson

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Re: Digico S21/S31
« Reply #17 on: September 02, 2017, 03:58:58 PM »

So, what they did was set the red to be ~ 6dB lower than other folk? When you run out of ones you are done no matter who builds it.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

The engineer in me completely agrees, but try it.  You can play media into an S21 and turn the gain all the way up...to the point that the meter never drops out of the red and it doesn't get crunchy.  Technically it must get more distorted, but that distortion is somehow still very low.  The pre and A/D are awesome.  Once your in, it's 40bit floating so there's really no practical summing amp limit.  Maybe someday I'll hook it up to the test rig and see what is happening, but for now I've been too busy using it.
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Peter Morris

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Re: Digico S21/S31
« Reply #18 on: September 02, 2017, 05:21:26 PM »

..... DLive looks very interesting, especially as they seem open to including some theatre-friendly scene features including the tracking that they've just added to the latest software update. I'm watching the brand with interest at the minute.

If you have the budget, the DLive is the way to go. The new scene management is great and will do everything you want for theatre applications. The UI is just a delight to use and it sounds fantastic, arguably the best on the market.
 
It operates at 96kHz and I believe it uses a 72 bit signal path combined with a 96 bit accumulator. This give you the sound quality of fixed bit mathematics combined with head room of floating point.

I have used QLab & Midi with a Dlive. A&H also offer a bunch of expansion and remote control solutions for the Dlive that are perfect for theatre applications as well as Dante and Waves cards.

In terms of performance, compare it to an SD10 not the S21/31.   The only negative is rider acceptance, its gaining acceptance at the moment faster than anything else on the market, but it’s not there yet.
« Last Edit: September 02, 2017, 05:27:40 PM by Peter Morris »
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Chris Eddison

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Re: Digico S21/S31
« Reply #19 on: September 03, 2017, 05:49:56 AM »

I have used the Roland M400 for theater and I understand that the lack of scribble strips being a problem. I use Palladium from https://www.chsounddesign.com/ for scene management.
You know i'd completely forgotten about Palladium! That's really interesting. I've downloaded it to have a play with. Whilst it doesn't fix all of my problems (DCA reasignment isn't as useful without the scribble strips changing at the same time) it gives me loads more functionality. I think i'll still stick to my own mic plots for the time being as, to be honest, it's something I quite like doing, though the mic plot feature does look like an interesting concept.
This does actually open up a few more options for me in the future. Realistically i'm a long way off of affording a DLive system (newborn baby, moving house, general adult'y stuff that wasn't a problem 3 years ago before I was married and a dad!) but I was offered a very cheap second M480 a while back. To have 2 of them and be able to do some more involved theatre functions would be a huge deal. Either using them as a pair (they cascade really nicely with Roland's built in cascading and bus-sharing features) or having a spare in the van.

I don't know where in the world you are Kevin, but an M480 Palladium file would be incredible. If you're in the UK then I can get my console to you somehow. As most of you folks on here are from the US though it's probably unlikely. Roland do at least publish their full midi implementation (which I agree is incredibly open and useful) here;
https://proav.roland.com/global/support/by_product/m-480/owners_manuals/3d62ab5c-e4cc-43e4-9394-880e631ecfa3/
No idea how different it'll be to the M400 though.
It's been a brilliant console. If it had scribble strips and if Roland were still doing software updates, i'd not even be thinking of replacing it.
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Re: Digico S21/S31
« Reply #19 on: September 03, 2017, 05:49:56 AM »


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