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[Randall Hyde]

Although I have taken a quick look at the Behringer, I don't think I want to make that purchase when it has not been out and proven yet.  I hope that it ends up being a great product, but they have a reputation to overcome first.

... second, and third, too
Cheers,
Randy Hyde

[Taylor Phillips]

I'm not recommending Behringer, mind you, but if you're considering the Studio Live you might look at Barry's new 32-channel digital board.

There's a lot of good stuff with the Behringer board on paper, but who knows how it translates into real life.  The main practical drawback with it I think, and other boards with motorized faders, is the use of layers.  You might want to adjust the lead guitar on the top layer, but forget you just tweaked the kick drum on the bottom layer, haven't switched and wonder why you don't hear the guitar changing. The X32 at least does have the scribble strips (for now at least) which makes this less of a problem, but if you want to set up monitor or recording mixes on the faders, which I believe it lets you do, you might still have the board in 'sends-on-fader' mode and wonder why something isn't getting louder/softer when you're moving the fader (happened to me all the time when first using an LS9)

[Arnold B. Krueger]

The Behringer X32 started being promoted and discussed about a year ago, started being shown in January and apparently was initially to have been released 2nd or 3rd quarter of 2011, however the last I heard it was still "coming soon".  I've heard unsubstantiated rumors that it may be released next spring and that it may initially be released without all of the capabilities with those being added via firmware updates in the future.  Regardless of whether the delay is the result of technical, production or patent/copyright issues, I have not seen an updated release date or found anyone that has apparently seen, heard or had a chance to use an actual working console.

Those are still vapor as far as I know.

[TJ (Tom) Cornish]

There's a lot of good stuff with the Behringer board on paper, but who knows how it translates into real life.  The main practical drawback with it I think, and other boards with motorized faders, is the use of layers.  You might want to adjust the lead guitar on the top layer, but forget you just tweaked the kick drum on the bottom layer, haven't switched and wonder why you don't hear the guitar changing. The X32 at least does have the scribble strips (for now at least) which makes this less of a problem, but if you want to set up monitor or recording mixes on the faders, which I believe it lets you do, you might still have the board in 'sends-on-fader' mode and wonder why something isn't getting louder/softer when you're moving the fader (happened to me all the time when first using an LS9)

Layering is a fact of life in the digital age.  Even "layerless" boards like the Yamaha M7 or the Studiolives have layers in some form - there aren't individual sets of encoders for EQ and dynamics for every channel, etc.

This is one of those things that's like driving a manual transmission car.  At first it's a little awkward and you grind a few gears, but it gets to be second nature to check the layer indicators to make sure you're adjusting what you think you are.

If you have any good UI designs that can eliminate all layers, feel free to let the manufacturers know - no one wants to over-complicate the board, but no one has yet figured out how to have the same 1:1 control to function layout of the analog world.

[Randall Hyde]

There's a lot of good stuff with the Behringer board on paper, but who knows how it translates into real life.

Yes, indeed. Behringer has always looked good on paper. Didn't always translate into real-life performance, though.

The main practical drawback with it I think, and other boards with motorized faders, is the use of layers.  You might want to adjust the lead guitar on the top layer, but forget you just tweaked the kick drum on the bottom layer, haven't switched and wonder why you don't hear the guitar changing. The X32 at least does have the scribble strips (for now at least) which makes this less of a problem, but if you want to set up monitor or recording mixes on the faders, which I believe it lets you do, you might still have the board in 'sends-on-fader' mode and wonder why something isn't getting louder/softer when you're moving the fader (happened to me all the time when first using an LS9)

Yes, overloaded controls ("layers") is a big problem to me. That's why I went with SAC -- I could add as many control surfaces as I wanted to SAC (well, with a little bit of effort) and avoid overloaded controls entirely. Some people are happy users banking around with 8 faders, in a critical situation (like feedback) I want to grab the appropriate fader and move it without thinking about which bank of channels is currently switched in.

That said, note that while "overloaded controls" typically implies "motorized faders", it isn't necessarily the case that "motorized faders" implies "overloaded controls." As I just mentioned, I'm setting up my SAC system with one fader per input channel strip; though it might not seem like motorized faders are necessary in the situation, they are still very nice to have. Here are a couple of reasons:

1) Festivals: doing several bands during the same show. You sound-check them, save the settings, and recall the setting before the band goes on (and in my world, I often get less than 20-30 minutes to strike one band and get the next one on; manually adjusting faders, even with something like the SL's saved settings, is critical lost time).
2) Scenes during the same set -- if you rehearse with a band, you can save different mixer settings for different songs (or even different parts of songs) and recall those settings during the performance. It's nice to have the faders show you exactly what their current settings are in case you have to make a venue-specific change.
3) Restoration: Often, I'll make minor tweaks to an input channel's volume during a song. It's nice to (exactly) recover the fader to the original sound check level after the song (or section of the song) where the tweak was needed.
4) A/B-ing. Sometimes (especially during sound check), it's nice to be able to listen to two different mixes and quickly switch between them. Technically, this doesn't require motorized faders, but it's still nice to be able to see the settings on the faders when A/B-ing two different mixes.

The one place I'm willing to accept overloaded controls is on the channel strip parameters (attenuator, EQ, dynamics, aux sends, effects, etc.). Having one set of controls (something like the Mackie C4 or Behringer BCR-2000) that controls the currently selected channel strip works okay; that's a better solution that having 32 (or more) additional knobs for each input channel strip.
Cheers,
Randy Hyde

[Frank DeWitt]

Yes, indeed. Behringer has always looked good on paper. Didn't always translate into real-life performance, though.

Yes, overloaded controls ("layers") is a big problem to me. That's why I went with SAC --
Randy Hyde

Well put Randy.  I,ll just add that big screens can help a lot.  I don't understand why high end mixers still use small screens.  I use SAC at church and have 48 ch in and 8 ch out that our important to me.  (many more outputs are used for IEMs)

I spent $240 on a pr of Dell 20 in wide screen monitors and I have every single channel on screen where I can see it and find it.
I find it very useful. 
 
Frank

[g'bye, Dick Rees]

  I don't understand why high end mixers still use small screens.

They don't, necessarily.  A whole host of pros add multiple larger screens to their consoles....just as you do with your SAC rig.  The console makers don't need to include a feature which would add to the overall size of their product when the user can add them as needed.......as you do with SAC.

[Kent Thompson]

They don't, necessarily.  A whole host of pros add multiple larger screens to their consoles....just as you do with your SAC rig.  The console makers don't need to include a feature which would add to the overall size of their product when the user can add them as needed.......as you do with SAC.

Just to add to this:
I could add a bigger touch screen to our iLive but, I don't use the one it has that much. That is more due to its layout being a much bigger console with everything I need on the surface. Layers....not a big deal to me. It is just as easy to punch a button to bring a layer up as it is to move over to the other side of a 48 channel analog and try to read the tiny print below the controls to make sure you have your hand on the right knob and to me it is even just as fast as moving a mouse to change a level on a fader. It's a to each his own kind of thing. I do have a lap top and an iPad on the ready incase I need them though. If for some reason my console goes down I can always resort to using one of those or even my iPhone to run the system.

I like the StudioLive. I liked the way the eq behaved when I adjusted something. Getting a computer set up beside the console with the software helps give you a better visual on it if you need that.

[Steven Tye]

I purchased a StudioLive for our new church auditorium. Building is a few weeks away so I havent had a chance to fire it up as yet, but thought I would share my rationale for selecting it over an analogue mixer of the same price.

Pros:

• Love the PC / Mac integration for scene recall and making changes, but especially the multi-track recording. With this we can record a few live performances in raw format and then use them as a baseline for setting up FOH and foldback mixes by replaying the performances and adjusting after the band has left. You can also record an entire song and use part or all of it as a backing track for a later event.
• free iPad app will allow you to walk around the room and test and tweak FOH plus adjust your stage monitor levels (we dont use IEM)
• In comparison to an analogue mixer, I find the studiolive to be more tamper-proof in terms of automatically setting a solid mix, EQ etc, and therefore, for simple performances, the sound operator can focus just on the faders. This should work well in our case where some operators have less experience than others.
• As someone else mentioned, the fully parametric EQ removes the need for a separate EQ. Same for basic effects. If you have time delay issues though, I don't believe it can correct these from the desk
• The Presonus user community seems very active and is well supported by Presonus. Lately they have had weekly web casts of how to use their products in different contexts. There is a great one there on drum mixing.

Cons:

• Would have loved 32 inputs instead of 24, but you can use the tape-in and some of the aux ins as inputs also. We were using 8-10 inputs on our old board for PC, CD, MP3 inputs etc which, other than volume, dont need to be tweaked much, so we bought a 10 channel line mixer which will sub-mix these inputs and then run through the stereo tape in on the StudioLive
• Many people write the board off because it doesn't have motorized faders - this is more of a problem for studio recording than live sound IMO. Some desks like the Behringer X32 or Yamaha 01V96VCM have to have motorized faders because the control surface inst large enough for all of the faders, so (in the case of the X32) there are 16 faders and 2 layers. For inexperienced operators, layers add one extra level of complexity, though I like the way it is done on the A&H iLive and X32 with colour coding and LCD channel labels. At the end of the day, in our case, for the price, it wasn't a big issue.
• There are a few Presonus "Haters" out there in other forums. Some had genuine gripes with support issues like faulty pots, system freezes etc, but most I spoke to hadn't seen these. Many recommended that you place the desk on a UPS to clean the power and soften any power dips.

I agree the Berhinger X32 looks good, but who wants to be an early adopter of a first generation Berhinger product? Some of their stuff is excellent (DIs for example), but our old mixer is a Berhinger Eurodesk and you can smell the dodgy-ness when you use it.

Cheers
Steve

[Brad Weber]

Many people write the board off because it doesn't have motorized faders - this is more of a problem for studio recording than live sound IMO. Some desks like the Behringer X32 or Yamaha 01V96VCM have to have motorized faders because the control surface inst large enough for all of the faders, so (in the case of the X32) there are 16 faders and 2 layers. For inexperienced operators, layers add one extra level of complexity, though I like the way it is done on the A&H iLive and X32 with colour coding and LCD channel labels. At the end of the day, in our case, for the price, it wasn't a big issue.

I think most would say the opposite, that the fader and pot automation is more likely to be relevant to live sound uses than to studio applications.  The issue is really in how you use scenes.  If scenes are used to recall base configurations before an act or performance starts then not having fader, head amp, etc. automation may not be a big deal as you have time to set things manually (including aspects such as Aux masters that are set to the saved level while the controls are neither changed nor any indicators provided and thus have to be manually charted and manually set as with analog consoles). However, if scene recall is routinely used as part of the performance then not having that automation, was well as any drops in audio while recalling scenes, can be a major issue.  That is why while the StudioLives are a good option for some applications, I would never recommend them for theatrical use as they simply do not function well in that type of application.

The layers or not issue is pretty much addressed in your previous point, having one fader per channel eliminates layers but can also either limit the channel count and/or requires a physically larger device.  If you can patch physical inputs to channels in the mixer or create 'user defined' layers then you can always set up the layers in a manner that minimized having to flip through them in normal use.  And a potential benefit of layers is minimizing the channels on the work surface that are not being used or are infrequently used.  Simply another example of having to consider the intended use and users.

[ProSoundWeb Community]