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jensenmann · 10th December 2009

I´ve been in the same situation twice the last two years when I was involved in the planning of a small surround room for a professional school (we´re in Germany, different education system) and a large room for live/broadcast work.
The surround room was intended for recording/mixing and hence got PTHD and a Yamaha DM2000 digital desk because of the total recall ability. Students and teachers usually have 1.5h time intervals in the room. Total recall was a must for fast changeovers. Yamaha did support us more than other companies so we went this route. Digital audio is regarded as the future, more than analog, at least here in Germany (let´s not discuss this) so the decision was a nobrainer. But we added a bunch of analog outboard and extremely flexible patchbays (analog and digital) for being able to teach routing.
The broadcast/live room was a different beast. Here I bought an ADT audio C series desk which basically is one of a kind. It´s inline with matrixes and cleanfeed busses which makes it unique. No other manufacturer was able to built something strange. It has an automation, too. In this room the task was to be able to show the students all variations of consoles. Here they have less time with the consoles (we have app. 10 different ones) so the big one is for demostration only with me as operator. The students work with smaller desks. The surface needed to be analog because it´s easier to show them certain things very fast. Changeovertimes are different in this room because it´s only me teaching here, no other guy´s messing up everything. The desk is 48ch which is enough to have two different projects set up at a time. More is not necessary which rendered the need for total recall unnecessary. The manufacturer is a german company which makes support easy and cheaper than other products. They supply a lot of desks to broadcasters, filmstudios, OBtrucks, etc (studios, too) which is a valuable argument because we want to demonstrate gear which is widespread in the upper quality league. But we already had budget gear, too, so to step up in quality was another argument.
I hope some of these arguments are helpful for your decision.
cheers
Jens

10th December 2009	#14
jensenmann Lives for gear Joined: Aug 2008 Location: Karlsruhe, Germany Posts: 723	I´ve been in the same situation twice the last two years when I was involved in the planning of a small surround room for a professional school (we´re in Germany, different education system) and a large room for live/broadcast work. The surround room was intended for recording/mixing and hence got PTHD and a Yamaha DM2000 digital desk because of the total recall ability. Students and teachers usually have 1.5h time intervals in the room. Total recall was a must for fast changeovers. Yamaha did support us more than other companies so we went this route. Digital audio is regarded as the future, more than analog, at least here in Germany (let´s not discuss this) so the decision was a nobrainer. But we added a bunch of analog outboard and extremely flexible patchbays (analog and digital) for being able to teach routing. The broadcast/live room was a different beast. Here I bought an ADT audio C series desk which basically is one of a kind. It´s inline with matrixes and cleanfeed busses which makes it unique. No other manufacturer was able to built something strange. It has an automation, too. In this room the task was to be able to show the students all variations of consoles. Here they have less time with the consoles (we have app. 10 different ones) so the big one is for demostration only with me as operator. The students work with smaller desks. The surface needed to be analog because it´s easier to show them certain things very fast. Changeovertimes are different in this room because it´s only me teaching here, no other guy´s messing up everything. The desk is 48ch which is enough to have two different projects set up at a time. More is not necessary which rendered the need for total recall unnecessary. The manufacturer is a german company which makes support easy and cheaper than other products. They supply a lot of desks to broadcasters, filmstudios, OBtrucks, etc (studios, too) which is a valuable argument because we want to demonstrate gear which is widespread in the upper quality league. But we already had budget gear, too, so to step up in quality was another argument. I hope some of these arguments are helpful for your decision. cheers Jens