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[Craig Hauber]

What's the most efficient and economical way to get AES/EBU ins and outs on an M32c?

Looking to connect a submixer and would like to stay digital (I have 01v96 with AES card).  Also my main system DSP (Nion) has an unused AES input card so would love to digitally feed that from the M32c also.
-I do have the Dante card but nothing to use it with at this particular venue currently.
Just wanting to avoid unnecessary DA/AD conversions as well as keeping my total delay to a minimum.

Don't want to upgrade to a Dante capable submixer or main DSP for this coming season (cost out of budget)

Also the next step would be looking for advise on an upgrade to the X/M product family that can mix in a surface-less fashion but handle more than 32 channels.  I need a minimum of 48 simultaneous along with auxiliary line-level playback inputs.

Needless to say this is for musical theatre (i.e. no real budget for this beyond our normal payroll, operating expenses and consumables )
I can find plenty of systems available but nothing "affordable" or incrementally acquirable like the X/M32 products.  Don't need a surface, multiple touchscreen PC's with Mixing Station is what we use now and would be nice to move to a larger system and retain that familiarity.

[Brian Jojade]

One of the sad limitations of the X/M series consoles is the limit of 32 full channels and 8 limited function aux channels (total of 40)

If submixing is an option, pick up an X32 rack.  You can pass stagebox channels through AES50 which does open up a huge amount of flexibility.

If you want a single console, the A&H SQ-5 does 48 channels, or the Soundcraft Si Impact can do up to 80 channels.  I'm VERY gunshy about the Soundcraft consoles though, as I've seen the older models have a major flaw in them where if you control them via an iPad occasionally it can completely crash the surface controls on the console requiring a full reboot.  Not fun to have to do mid show!!

[Dan Mortensen]

If there were an X/M series device that had 3 AES50 ports, you might be able to do what you want and stay within that ecosystem. As is, the only Behringer product I'm aware of that has 3 ports is the Wing, and I don't know enough about it to know if you can cascade two consoles together to get more than the basic number of inputs.

In the X/M system, you can connect two consoles together to get 48 full featured inputs by having output 1 (Mon mix 1, for example) digitally going into input 17 of the master console, with only the Mix 1 output turned up to unity. Output 2 connected to input 18, sending to mix 2 only, etc. for all 16 console outputs.

Then Inputs 1-16 on that console are your extra 16 inputs to the 32 on the other console, so you get to 48. Solo'ing is on each console, so if you want to listen to only 1 set of headphones you have to plan that with a summing device connected to the PFL/AFL outputs on each console. FX patching needs attention, as you can either do it within each console or have it all done in the 16 input master console.

All that said, you're still short if you need 48 inputs and the Aux TRS inputs as well. That could only be done on consoles with those inputs, not the rack mount ones. Now that I'm paying attention to it, I guess you could use 2 Racks for that, but not the Midas C's.

So I guess replacing your Midas C/Behringer Cores with Racks would meet your goal. Huh, how about that?

[Craig Hauber]

If there were an X/M series device that had 3 AES50 ports, you might be able to do what you want and stay within that ecosystem. As is, the only Behringer product I'm aware of that has 3 ports is the Wing, and I don't know enough about it to know if you can cascade two consoles together to get more than the basic number of inputs.

In the X/M system, you can connect two consoles together to get 48 full featured inputs by having output 1 (Mon mix 1, for example) digitally going into input 17 of the master console, with only the Mix 1 output turned up to unity. Output 2 connected to input 18, sending to mix 2 only, etc. for all 16 console outputs.

I've been doing that but in an analog fashion.  Can such cascading be done entirely through the AES50?
Now also wondering if I could run everything to the DSP and sum it all there. (it's a 40x24) Unfortunately analog but I wouldn't have that DAAD link between submixer and primary mixer.  Would be a piece of cake if I had Dante capability on the DSP

Then Inputs 1-16 on that console are your extra 16 inputs to the 32 on the other console, so you get to 48. Solo'ing is on each console, so if you want to listen to only 1 set of headphones you have to plan that with a summing device connected to the PFL/AFL outputs on each console. FX patching needs attention, as you can either do it within each console or have it all done in the 16 input master console.

Luckily the submixer is for the pit orchestra and the main mixer is all the earset wireless.  Very little, if any, need for common auxes.  The internal effects on each mixer are adequate as two independent mixes.

All that said, you're still short if you need 48 inputs and the Aux TRS inputs as well. That could only be done on consoles with those inputs, not the rack mount ones. Now that I'm paying attention to it, I guess you could use 2 Racks for that, but not the Midas C's.

I was under the impression that I could use a 3rd stagebox and route XLR inputs to aux channels (with the limits on aux processing of course). Same assumption with the Dante card -haven't needed to use it yet but could rent a Dante I/O of some kind if necessary (or put DVS on the playback PC's).

So I guess replacing your Midas C/Behringer Cores with Racks would meet your goal. Huh, how about that?

Not impossible, I'm using Behringer stage boxes so there's no difference compared to what I'm now using.  And having the built-in inputs would be nice. 
The racks seem more expensive than I remember, same with the cores -have prices gone up?

[Kevin Maxwell]

Also the next step would be looking for advise on an upgrade to the X/M product family that can mix in a surface-less fashion but handle more than 32 channels.  I need a minimum of 48 simultaneous along with auxiliary line-level playback inputs.

Needless to say this is for musical theatre (i.e. no real budget for this beyond our normal payroll, operating expenses and consumables )
I can find plenty of systems available but nothing "affordable" or incrementally acquirable like the X/M32 products.  Don't need a surface, multiple touchscreen PC's with Mixing Station is what we use now and would be nice to move to a larger system and retain that familiarity.

I used to use 2 Midas M32 mixers for musical theater but lately I have been using one Behringer WING. The inputs and outputs can be mono or stereo it has 40 full featured inputs and 8 Aux inputs that aren’t quite as full featured but they aren’t too limited either. I set some of my inputs to stereo like apron mics and hanging mics which are used for chorus numbers were they aren’t wearing wireless mics. I use at least one and sometimes two Midas DL32 stage boxes and I have used a Behringer X32Compact in the pit for the pit mics. And I have used the X32Compact as a monitor console for the pit. There aren’t a lot of inputs on the console it is made to use the external stage boxes.

The WING is a surface so it doesn’t satisfy that parameter. They haven’t come out with a WING Rack yet. When and if they do I will probably be installing them in churches as the IEM console with a Full sized WING at FOH.

The features and the capabilities are too much to cover here in a simple post.

And Mixing Station has a version for the WING.

[Brian Jojade]

I've been doing that but in an analog fashion.  Can such cascading be done entirely through the AES50?
Now also wondering if I could run everything to the DSP and sum it all there. (it's a 40x24) Unfortunately analog but I wouldn't have that DAAD link between submixer and primary mixer.  Would be a piece of cake if I had Dante capability on the DSP

Luckily the submixer is for the pit orchestra and the main mixer is all the earset wireless.  Very little, if any, need for common auxes.  The internal effects on each mixer are adequate as two independent mixes.

I was under the impression that I could use a 3rd stagebox and route XLR inputs to aux channels (with the limits on aux processing of course).

If you don't need common auxes and each are an independent mix, this gets very easy.  Yes, through AES50 you can pass through signal from one stagebox on to the other mixer.  The passthrough is still in blocks of 8, but you can assign channels one at a time on each mixer.  You can then send the outputs of the submixer back though AES50 and assign that to one of the Aux channels. You can set that channel as unity gain so there's nothing that needs to be messed with.  Easy peasy.

I've done stuff where the audio passes through MULTIPLE x32s before getting to the final destination.  One show I had an an SD8 pass through 3 X32s to another SD8 to for 8 channels of line level audio in each direction.  It was for a feed that someone else needed and instead of running their own cable, the passthrough made it dirt simple.  That signal was never mixed on any of the X32s, just passed through.

So cool.

[Russell Ault]

{...} The passthrough is still in blocks of 8 {...}

It's even better than that in v4: with the "User In" and "User Out" blocks (both of which can source from AES50 input channels and both of which can be assigned to AES50 output blocks) you can easily pass-through individual AES50 channels if you want to.

-Russ

[Brian Jojade]

It's even better than that in v4: with the "User In" and "User Out" blocks (both of which can source from AES50 input channels and both of which can be assigned to AES50 output blocks) you can easily pass-through individual AES50 channels if you want to.

-Russ

I knew you could use that for getting AES channels in and out of the mixer, but I couldn't remember if you could use that to route AES ->AES connections.

Yeah, compared to v1, it's a significantly better workflow!!  When it first came out, they had said it was a hardware limitation that required routing in blocks of 8.  Apparently, they figured a way around it!

[ProSoundWeb Community]