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Old 10-11-2011, 08:42 PM   #32
Tuned
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Nov 2010
Posts: 25
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I've house teched about 7 years and also toured ~60,000mi as a musician, so I can both agree and be offended by your statement Kenny We're not all like that, but there certainly are many like that, but venues have a worse track record for being weasels, especially if the house tech is paid from the door. My bands refuse to play places like that, especially since I can often mix circles around them.

The worst thing I'm seeing from venues that spring for a digital console is that they think they mix themselves. I've literally seen the bartender load up the "3-piece rock band" mix, work just the faders for the first song, then walk away. I've also encountered a lot of digital consoles locked to their "magic EQ's". An EQ setting is only as good as the engineer's familiarity with it, and the reason for buying all the bells and whistles is to make them available to skilled use, not to substitute for it!

The X32 looks a lot more like a Soundcraft SI Compact with its small display and knobs to the top left. The SI Compact has a design flaw where you can accidentally hit the button that brings up the EQ layer sideways and pin it under the top panel. Guess what holding down the EQ layer button does? It BYPASSES the EQ! Not the kind of thing you want to happen during a show. The can fix that by putting it in a pull-down menu on-screen, but they haven't yet.

Not sure if the X32 fell into that trap, but it does look like the knob labels are printed with LED knob indicators, a bad combo. When you put a light over that there is considerable glare from the top finish so you can't see the labels very well, and the brighter it is the less you can see the LEDs. And of course the pre-amps are undoubtedly lack-lustre on a $2500 32-channel console. Could be a good small venue workhorse though, assuming they don't break easy.

Last edited by Tuned; 10-11-2011 at 08:50 PM.
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