It would be great to know what specifically are the failings of the Aviom A320 that are overcome by the A&H boxes. Sound quality? Robustness? Ease of use?
Charles.
Sorry was at work, you deserve an explanation
My thoughts on all of this. My experiences, YMMV [your mileage may very].
From my perspective of being the technical director for a multi-site & venue church (all with aviom and wireless IEM's, running click & track), owning my own company using A&H QU series gear and having the same bands play on both the church's stage and my stage.
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We have used the older A16 and now the newer 320's.
The A16's are slowly breaking, though we've been using them for 5ish years I think?
-the nobs jitter the volume.
-not enough gain structure capabilities
-low sound quality (decent enough, but not great)
-low ch count (only 16, even having ST pairs on the 320 isn't helpful as it still uses up a button)
-ease of use is both ways, easy to use (when working) for a band guy; not easy to use as far as trying to set everything up because you have to limit yourself and combine things into auxes to send to the avioms. and you have to printout your own scribble strips.
-same price (expensive, compared to the feature rich A&H or DAL or other)
The 320's are nicer but still far from perfect and suffer from the same gain structure issues, sound quality, low ch count, ease of use, etc.
What Aviom does have is simplicity in that there's few options of configuration or a band guy to mess it up, the problem is band members aren't sound guys and rarely know what to do if its broke, so this simplicity hurts in the long run, and i'll explain why later.
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A&H ME-1; I'll lead this with the fact that the band never really comments on them being good, but they don't complain whereas they do complain about Avioms all the time. Think what you will of that.
-great sound quality & loud
-2 headphone outputs (you can walk up plug your headphones in and fix their mix for them
-balanced out for a wireless setup
-40ch count; so 24/32 input band and then groups for talkback and other things
-ease of use is a little less as far as the groups (because there isn't 40 buttons, just 16)
-screen isn't as transparent as the DAL products (i'm really seeing these as a fantastic alternative to Aviom)
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DAL gear (new to me, very neat)
-I like the talkback feature of DAL, but the input shouldn't be 1/8" it should be xlr for a mic; whatever...
-24 inputs is great, not the 40 of A&H, but you really just need a 'few' more from the aviom's 16.
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Lastly, I agree with Tim's post a whole lot, but At the end of the day YOU are the only one who can decide what is best for you and your church. I just advise listening to people who've done it before and spending God's money wisely.
Yamaha's monitor mix app is the way to go.
When I took over here at our Church, we used Yamaha CL5's and the Aviom system for monitoring. We had 2 different A360 systems running in parallel.
If I were you, I'd abandon the search for a 3rd party monitor solution when Yamaha has already done the work for you, and you've already paid for it in the purchase price of the console....
Tim got rid of Avioms as they were unnecessary, even though they were the better A360 system!
Anyone used both the DAL and A&H products and care to Pro/Con them? I thought the A&H was the best product out there for Dante networks, but had not heard of the DAL stuff...
At first glance, it seems like the DAL stuff is more pricey with lower channel count and requires more pieces? However, the intercom function looks interesting.
Indeed, never heard of DAL; but they seem to be a huge contender with those advanced features. ESPECIALLY at the price point. There is practically no reason to go with an aviom system when the DAL is same price.
Then combine the fact that that is street price; get a good dealer like Mike Pyle and you're set.
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Aviom 6mix $3.5k
Aviom A320 6mix link to B&HDAL 8mix $4.2k
http://www.fullcompass.com/prod/287955-Livemix-Digital-BundleA&H Me-1 8 mix system is a premium @ ~5k (depending on dealer, theres room for friends to get you great pricing
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