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QSC Touchmix-16

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Tom Bourke:
I did a corporate gig with a dozen break out rooms.  Most of the mixers were QSC Touchmix 16.  No one on the crew, including me, had seen them before.  Audio needs were simple, 2 to 4 wls and a PC audio feed all mixed to built in over head speakers.  We also had to add a video record feed.

Build quality was good and the unit has some weight to it.  No worries the cables were going to pull it off the table.  The proprietary power connector and external PSU were very solid and robust.  I would prefer a standard IEC connector or powercon and no line lump but this is far better than the flimsy  connectors on similar scale equipment.  Robustness is equivalent to a nice fitting IEC.  The unit gets hot on the bottom.  Not sure if this is a problem or not.  The case these came with was very good too.  Just enough room for the mixer and PSU with padding but not so bulky as to take up excessive space.

The user interface was very intuitive. Every one who had to use it had no problem getting to what they needed.  Even the video crew could adjust there own aux mix.  After using it with out any instruction for a day I looked up the manual.  This provided me with some very nice shortcuts.  It has several ways to do what you want to do.  If you think it should work that way, it does.  I would say given some basic setup and training even a nontechnical person could be trained to set levels and mutes.

I did not try any of these features but I wish I had had the time to.  The mixer comes with a tiny USB based wifi adaptor.  The mixer has the settings to be it's own wifi hotspot so no external network hardware needed.  Just the mixer out of the box and an ipad, or eventually, an android tablet to do remote mixing.  It also can do all inputs plus a stereo feed multi track recording to USB.  This would have solved our problems with the video crew had they or we been prepared to use it. It is not multi touch so rapid fire mixing may not work well on it.  At times I did find myself mixing on the gain pots.  However this mixer is so clean I did not feel that was a compromise of quality.

Over all I think it fits very well in the corporate break out, educational, DJ, small band, and church markets. If it has the IO you need and 1 adjustment at a time is OK then this is the board for you.

Jerome Malsack:
I too was able to work on one and found it easy to setup.  Also did the wifi and the 50 ft range for IPAD to wifi was a bit limiting.  Did a wedding, with DJ music, wireless for celebration, wireless for the singer with sound track. 

I did not like the lip over the rear cables making it difficult to trigger and release the XLR outputs. 

I also see the cost of the unit being above Mackie ??  or Behringers new lines ??  Yes I know you get what you pay for.

Setting up wifi and IPad was quick and easy. 

Adding effects to the singers mic was just as quick and easy. 

The DJ was the owner and would need some time to learn before working more and setting up the effects. 
I think that as experienced sound people will setup and run easily. 

Security on Wifi was good and with a quick change on the password one should be able to keep unwanted fingers out of the system. 

duy_luu:

--- Quote from: Tom Bourke on September 26, 2014, 06:28:16 PM ---I did a corporate gig with a dozen break out rooms.  Most of the mixers were QSC Touchmix 16.  No one on the crew, including me, had seen them before.  Audio needs were simple, 2 to 4 wls and a PC audio feed all mixed to built in over head speakers.  We also had to add a video record feed.

Build quality was good and the unit has some weight to it.  No worries the cables were going to pull it off the table.  The proprietary power connector and external PSU were very solid and robust.  I would prefer a standard IEC connector or powercon and no line lump but this is far better than the flimsy  connectors on similar scale equipment.  Robustness is equivalent to a nice fitting IEC.  The unit gets hot on the bottom.  Not sure if this is a problem or not.  The case these came with was very good too.  Just enough room for the mixer and PSU with padding but not so bulky as to take up excessive space.

The user interface was very intuitive. Every one who had to use it had no problem getting to what they needed.  Even the video crew could adjust there own aux mix.  After using it with out any instruction for a day I looked up the manual.  This provided me with some very nice shortcuts.  It has several ways to do what you want to do.  If you think it should work that way, it does.  I would say given some basic setup and training even a nontechnical person could be trained to set levels and mutes.

I did not try any of these features but I wish I had had the time to.  The mixer comes with a tiny USB based wifi adaptor.  The mixer has the settings to be it's own wifi hotspot so no external network hardware needed.  Just the mixer out of the box and an ipad, or eventually, an android tablet to do remote mixing.  It also can do all inputs plus a stereo feed multi track recording to USB.  This would have solved our problems with the video crew had they or we been prepared to use it. It is not multi touch so rapid fire mixing may not work well on it.  At times I did find myself mixing on the gain pots.  However this mixer is so clean I did not feel that was a compromise of quality.

Over all I think it fits very well in the corporate break out, educational, DJ, small band, and church markets. If it has the IO you need and 1 adjustment at a time is OK then this is the board for you.

--- End quote ---

I got the Qsc Touchmix 16 2 weeks ago and love it. It make my speakers sound warmer and louder. Especially the graphic eq's on output are very accurate. Only problem I have is the wifi is not stable, I found myself reset the network on the touchmix a few times.

I am hoping for Qsc to make a large console. Great job Qsc!

Chris Grimshaw:
Well, it's been a while but I thought I'd post some thoughts on the TM16 with the v3.0 updates. I use this desk for a huge proportion of my gigs, so I'm pretty familiar with it. I got it over a black-box type mixer because I don't trust WiFi connections enough to only ever use a tablet with no other way of operating the desk.

So,

Pros:
- Sounds decent
- Multi-track recording
- RTA (with v3 firmware)
- Easy to use
- Feedback elimination - semi-automatic: it'll ring out each output, but it won't do it on-the-go. It does provide a readout for likely frequencies when you look at it, so you can hit "manual kill" and it'll put a notch there.
- Form factor - it's a lot of processing in something the size of a 15" laptop.
- Has a screen
- USB WiFi dongle included
- Multi-touch via iPad
- Can assign different devices different permissions. ie, John's iPad only changes John's monitor mix.
- Comps, gates, FX, EQs, etc all fine. Do what they say they're doing to do, cleanly.

Cons:
- Screen's not great: single-touch and laggy, like the touch-screens of 15 years ago
- Non-recallable analogue gains (mitigated a little by the +/-15dB of digital gain available, but still)
- No flexibility in routing, apart from the 8 DCAs. It'd be nice to be able to split channels or send the main mix to an Aux send, etc etc, but that stuff has to be done manually.
- Only 2 USB ports. Since MIDI footswitches are supported, as well as USB drives for recording and the WiFi connection needing a USB port, a minimum of three would've been nice.


I ran out of XLR inputs when doing a live recording of a 5-piece folk band that included 4 audience mics and putting a condenser on everything, so these days I keep a couple of USB soundcards and run them into the stereo inputs for four more XLR inputs if I want them. Works fine for overheads and the like where you want them running as a stereo pair anyway.

Overall, I quite like it. I'm occasionally tempted by an X32R with one of those WiFi fader banks, but for now this desk does everything I ask of it.

Chris

Bradford "BJ" James:
I ended up grabbing a couple of these a few weeks ago for some corporate stuff we're doing. I really like them. Wifi dongle seems to work ok for a quick setup and go. It was easy enough to hook up an external router too.
Wish the power supply locked, and wish it had recallable gains (the 2 most common complaints/short comings), but it sounds great and is easy to use. Will be sending one out for school plays. Kids should pick up the workflow easily with a quick tutorial. SO portable.

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