Which mixing board for church - Mackie TT24, Peavey Sanctuary or Allen & Heath?

[johndykstra]

Originally Posted by carl111sound

Has anyone used the TASCAM DM-4800 as a cheap digi-live mixer? It seems to have all of the same functionality.

See my post above. Work flow is cumbersome. Repetition may yeild better results, but I wasn't willing to dive in that deep at the time. In a situation where you are the only person who will mix, it may prove to be a great tool. But one national act with their own FOH guy comes through and you've got a mess.

[ogamik]

Midas Venice!!!

[tone delux]

Allen & Heath and the Midas Venice are great.
Yamaha and Mackie have some great consoles for church.

[Steve Smith]

Hey all... it's been awhile.

Ok... here is my take, and for what its worth, I have been either on staff or just helping out at churches of varing sizes for about 15 years, the house consoles were literally everything from PM5000s to some POC Peavy thing from the abyss...

- Mackie TT24
- Mackie Onyx 32.4
Dont bother. Anything they make is a problem 99% of the time. it is a 2-3 year investment if you go with the analog stuff, You are throwing money away.
- Peavey Sanctuary Series S-32
Run away! Run away!

- Allen & Heath GL2400-32
If these are the choices, this is the hands-down winner. I agree that they have had issues occasionally, but the reality is this is an organization that is looking to get a good utility desk that will have to do alot more than it was ever designed to do. The A&H will have a home there, when and if you can get a higher end console, it will be right at home as a summing mixer, monitor console or whatever.

Thats my 48 cents worth of opinion, and one last thing - your best bet is to find a well capitalized local music store to buy it ( read - a place big enough that they stock things in case of a repair situation, and you can get everyhting you need within reason from , rentals etc. An online retailer can be attractive pricewise, but let yourself be known in your local market. you get what I am saying?

[Tomiboy]

Originally Posted by carl111sound

Has anyone used the TASCAM DM-4800 as a cheap digi-live mixer? It seems to have all of the same functionality.

Had one, sold it coz it was buggy, They sound fine but I would never go back to a digital console again. They are ok when everything is working, but when stuff goes wrong it really goes WRONG.....

[GZsound]

I have used the Mackie digital board on a couple of occasions and find the board lacking and almost worthless.

One thing to keep in mind is the number of cooks in the kitchen. If there are only going to be one or two folks using the mixer than digital or analogue, it won't make that much difference and digital is great for eliminating outboard gear, storing scenes, etc.

But if EVER there will be guest engineers, novice sound guys, etc. working the mixer than by all means go analogue. Nearly everyone can operate an analogue mixer.

And it isn't just the old guys.. Young guys don't know how to work every single digital console either, just the one or two they are trained on and if you train an old guy, he'll do fine on the digital console too.

For digital, get a Yamaha. For analogue, get an Allen & Heath or a Soundcraft.

For more money, but not necessarily better sound, go with Midas, Toft, etc.

[hbphotoav]

Even though this was a 4 year old thread, I'll chime in to say... as the tech guy at a 9-years-young church, very contemporary worship style (full band, lots of video graphic elements, IMAG for the teachings, web stream, podcasts) we ended up, in 2005, with a Allen & Heath GL3800 48x8x4x2.1 (after we outgrew the 8-ch EV Entertainer and Mackie SR32.4 we started with). We moved three years ago (2009) to add a A&H MixWiz 12M to handle IEMs for the band (7-9 mono mixes every week, different band roster every week...) and then, this year, to a PreSonus StudioLive 24.4.2 for IEMs (all 24 band inputs - the MW12M allowed for only 16 - and playas control their own mixes via iPad and iPhone apps). The GL3800 was carried over from the theater we rented for four years, to a 10K ft2 1000-seat room, and a new d+b T-10 array.

Since the move-in, we've had about $3K/year for "improvements"... nothing nearly enough for the $25-30K for a digital solution that is better than a lateral move from where we are: 48 inputs into the main console, 24 inputs to 10 aux mixes to the stage from the SL 24.4.2 (passive split), plus eight additional auxes (verb, delay, and six wedge feeds when we need them), four matrixes (lobby feed, stereo record feed, and audio distro feed), and LR/Mono (house L/R and subs) from the GL3800. All that for a scaled growth and total investment of less than $12,500 for the current mix capability.

We would all (the tech crew) like to have the convenience of a live digital console... but we need more than 48x24 outputs for it to make sense... and that moves us to large-form Venue, DigiCo or PM5D territory. And 4-6X the investment cost...

For us, the acoustic treatment of a (former) warehouse space will pay off in a better sounding room far more noticeably than any slight improvement in S/N, onboard processing and convenience. The world is rapidly going digital (as am I, in my small-form PA and recording kit) but $8K will still put 48 channels of very nice sounding live audio control into that environment. We'll move, when it makes financial sense to do so. Until then, we'll remain happily analog.