I've had this desk a while, and I've had chance to use it for a few gigs and some recording work. I upgraded to the TM30Pro from a TM16. For me, the QSC TouchMix desks tick a lot of boxes, and the boxes they don't tick aren't a particularly high priority for me. In short, they're a compromise, but one I can live with.
Things I like:
- The workflow suits me - it still feels fairly analogue in a lot of ways.
- The USB-B connector on the back lets you feed all desk inputs straight to a laptop, independent of what the mixer is doing. I use that for backup recording, but I suspect I could do more if I wanted to.
- More flexible routing, in the form of input patches, side-chain processing, and subgroups
- The screen is much improved over the TM16. You've now got multi-touch and smooth movements. The TM16 screen was only suitable for poking at to select a parameter, which you'd then have to adjust with the wheel.
- Lots of analogue I/O with 14 mono monitor mixes on something the size of a 12-16 channel analogue desk.
- 3x pages of 8x custom fader banks. Actually came in handy for a small gig recently, where I had everything (instruments, vocals, FX, monitor send) on one page, which felt like luxury.
Things I don't like:
- Analogue gain controls. It's not a big deal for me, though - I'm usually at side-of-stage (with the desk) for line checks etc, so I set the analogue gains then. It's rare that I need to make a return trip to change those controls.
- I wish they'd followed the TM16's example of having 16x XLR inputs. The TM30Pro has 24x XLR inputs, and then 3x stereo inputs. I'm thinking of picking up another 6x channels of preamps so I can run 30x mics.
- No Dante or other digital I/O
I'm very pleased with the TM30Pro so far, and find it more intuitive than the A&H SQ5 that I spent a few days mixing on recently.
There are a couple of features I haven't tested yet, like external faders, but when I do I'll report back.
Chris
