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Author Topic: Thinking about upgrading my mixing desk - AKA talk me out of a QSC TM30  (Read 5336 times)

Chris Grimshaw

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Hi all,

I've had my QSC TM16 for a good few years now, after buying one shortly after they came out. It's served me well in a lot of ways. I usually set it up next to the stage, and mix from a couple of iPads displaying 16 channels between them.

The things I like about it are:
- Straightforward workflow
- Multi-track recording
- Form-factor
- It's not a black box. You can still mix from the desk itself if the network fails catastrophically.

The things I'd like the next desk to do include:
- Having portable faders
- Increased channel count
- Subgroups
- Side-chain compression
- Digital I/O.


The portable faders bit is a big deal to me. I prefer to mix on faders, but there isn't always room for a full-size mixing desk at the FOH position for a given venue. There's also the issue of running power to/from FOH. At the moment, my FOH position is entirely self-contained: I have a 20Ah USB battery to keep the iPads going, and that's it.

QSC has done something clever with their TM30 Pro, where you can connect a set of faders to the iPad via USB, and it's all taken care of. The faders usually require 12v DC power, which can still be done by battery.

The only thing I've seen online that gets close is with an X32 and some XTouch faders. However, that setup also involved a WiFi bridge and a laptop to configure it all. The XTouch faders also require mains power. It's nowhere near as sleek as the QSC setup.
Of course, the X32 world does have options to add external stage boxes, but I don't think I'd bother to go there myself - it's rare that I want more than 16 channels.

The thing that seems to put people off the TouchMix desks is the analogue gain controls, but I don't have a big problem there - for multi-act festivals, I'll be at side-of-stage helping with the changeover anyway, and I'll set the analogue gains during line checks before walking back to FOH. It's very rare that I make a return trip.

So, it's looking like the QSC TM30 Pro is the thing to get. It's not perfect (no digital I/O, no expandability, analogue gains), but it seems to fit my priorities quite well overall.

Any thoughts on this? I like to think I have a pretty good handle on what's out there, but if there's another desk that ticks more of the boxes, I'd love to hear about it.

Cheers, all.
Chris
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Bob Stone

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Re: Thinking about upgrading my mixing desk - AKA talk me out of a QSC TM30
« Reply #1 on: August 12, 2019, 11:25:38 AM »

Watching this...will be interesting to see what options are out there.

Assume you've made the usual rounds, Allen & Heath Qu or SQ? Soundcraft UI or SI? Mackie DL? Midas M or MR? As far as Behringer might have come with their digital offerings, I could never stomach buying a mixer with Behringer in the name.
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Chris Grimshaw

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Re: Thinking about upgrading my mixing desk - AKA talk me out of a QSC TM30
« Reply #2 on: August 12, 2019, 12:07:47 PM »

Yeah, I've made the usual rounds:

A&H Qu doesn't have scribble strips but was okay otherwise. Similar work flow to...
A&H SQ - spent two days and around 12 bands on this desk, still didn't feel particularly at home afterwards. I could probably get used to it, though.
Soundcraft UI is a black box, which I don't want - if the router goes down, there's literally no control.
Soundcraft SI looks okay, but haven't used one in person.
Mackie DL would be a downgrade, IMO, from the TM16.
Midas M32 was pretty good when I last used one, but that was a while ago.
Midas MR are black boxes again


The A&H SQ, Soundcraft SI and Midas M32 all appear to be good offerings, but none of them seem to allow a bank of wireless faders to be added. That's the dream for me, and has been since I started mixing on glass - it'd be a best of both worlds, and I'm a little surprised that there isn't a race to offer such things.

Chris
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dave briar

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Re: Thinking about upgrading my mixing desk - AKA talk me out of a QSC TM30
« Reply #3 on: August 12, 2019, 12:15:47 PM »

The A&H SQ, Soundcraft SI and Midas M32 all appear to be good offerings, but none of them seem to allow a bank of wireless faders to be added. That's the dream for me, and has been since I started mixing on glass - it'd be a best of both worlds, and I'm a little surprised that there isn't a race to offer such things.
Amen.
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Taylor Hall

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Re: Thinking about upgrading my mixing desk - AKA talk me out of a QSC TM30
« Reply #4 on: August 12, 2019, 12:42:16 PM »


The A&H SQ, Soundcraft SI and Midas M32 all appear to be good offerings, but none of them seem to allow a bank of wireless faders to be added. That's the dream for me, and has been since I started mixing on glass - it'd be a best of both worlds, and I'm a little surprised that there isn't a race to offer such things.

Chris
I assume you mean physical faders? While it's not "officially" supported, you can control the X/M32 and SC Si via OSC, but I'm not sure of any wireless devices that would necessarily fit that bill as far as faders go, there are plenty of wired versions though.
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Chris Grimshaw

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Re: Thinking about upgrading my mixing desk - AKA talk me out of a QSC TM30
« Reply #5 on: August 12, 2019, 05:08:24 PM »

I assume you mean physical faders? While it's not "officially" supported, you can control the X/M32 and SC Si via OSC, but I'm not sure of any wireless devices that would necessarily fit that bill as far as faders go, there are plenty of wired versions though.

Yeah, physical faders.

Here's a bit of the video: https://youtu.be/Yj6cke1DPw4?t=386
They've set up a small FOH with an iPad and a fader bank, and it's controlling the desk over WiFi.

I haven't seen anything that can rival that.

Chris
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Mark Scrivener

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Re: Thinking about upgrading my mixing desk - AKA talk me out of a QSC TM30
« Reply #6 on: August 12, 2019, 05:45:09 PM »

.....
Soundcraft UI is a black box, which I don't want - if the router goes down, there's literally no control.
....

Not true. Run a Cat5/6 cable from the UI to your FOH position and connect to a computer with a large touch screen. People are running large multi day festivals this way with the UI (see the UI facebook page). And while there are ways to "rig" physical faders, nothing official from Soundcraft.

Russell Ault

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Re: Thinking about upgrading my mixing desk - AKA talk me out of a QSC TM30
« Reply #7 on: August 12, 2019, 05:58:27 PM »

Not true. Run a Cat5/6 cable from the UI to your FOH position and connect to a computer with a large touch screen. People are running large multi day festivals this way with the UI (see the UI facebook page). And while there are ways to "rig" physical faders, nothing official from Soundcraft.

That still requires some kind of out-of-box control. If the network fails on an X32 Rack, you can still run the console (painfully) from the front of the box. If the network fails on an XR (or UI, etc.), which I've seen happen, then you're totally out of options.

-Russ
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Mark Scrivener

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Re: Thinking about upgrading my mixing desk - AKA talk me out of a QSC TM30
« Reply #8 on: August 12, 2019, 06:18:02 PM »

That still requires some kind of out-of-box control. If the network fails on an X32 Rack, you can still run the console (painfully) from the front of the box. If the network fails on an XR (or UI, etc.), which I've seen happen, then you're totally out of options.

-Russ

True, but we could say the same thing about the Dlive Mix rack or any other stage box where the mixing happens in the stage box. And if you have a dumb stage box that is just sending everything back to the console then loosing the connection means the whole show goes down....So either way it is a trade off....unless of course you have something like the X32 rack as you point out....but easy enough to just run dual network cables so you can switch over should their be a problem. Or if you are really concerned, many of these boxes are cheap enough you could have a 2nd ready to go as backup.

Ryan McLeod

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Re: Thinking about upgrading my mixing desk - AKA talk me out of a QSC TM30
« Reply #9 on: August 12, 2019, 11:11:54 PM »

You could also simply skip the network entirely and connect a USB touchscreen directly to a Soundcraft UI-24, or use both a wifi tablet and the touchscreen for local control.
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Re: Thinking about upgrading my mixing desk - AKA talk me out of a QSC TM30
« Reply #9 on: August 12, 2019, 11:11:54 PM »


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