What analog live board makes a show sound the most like a record?

[recorder2]

I guess we're talking super low distortion, excellent preamplifiers on every channel, an excellent mix bus, real euphonic quality. Is there a 'Neve 88RS' of the touring world?

I live in the studio world, not live, and have been dying to know this about the live world of equipment.

[burnhard]

Live Sound is quite a different beast IMO....
It's often more about easy and fast use of a desk....
MIDAS would always be my first choice....

[recorder2]

For sheer opulent sound quality? Midas all the way?

[absoluteenergy]

midas have some beautiful consoles. but some of their stuff is a bit of a thumbs down (verona... cough cough)
gimme the digi co desks with the pretty touch screens and huuuuuuuge pre amp gain and il be happy, sd7 and 9 are tastey.

[Matti]

Even a record doesn't sound like a record trough a big pa system even if good

Matti

[AlexK]

Originally Posted by Matti

Even a record doesn't sound like a record trough a big pa system even if good

Matti

Depends on the system/venue. I've heard some superb sounding larger PA, but most of the time, you're right it can sound a bit mushy, especially all this line-array stuff (although I've also heard some great LAs).

[7rojo7]

for live you can ease up on a compressor and use a limiter to its best.
it depends on the opertator
a better question might be 'WHO' can make a concert sound like a record.

[Matti]

I just meant bringing a Neve or SSL to a live PA gig wouldn't be usefull, rather a digital desk
like DigiCo, Midas, Venue etc. -what are they. Its all about the workflow

Matti

[LX3]

Having recorded a lot of FOH mixes while multitracking, I am of the opinion that the best-sounding live desk is the one in the best room, with the best band, mics and mic placement in front of it, and the best operator behind it.

Vi6, Digico, Midas XL8, Pro 6, Venue, PM5D, all sound fantastic. Or appalling. Or somewhere inbetween. Depending on the above factors.

I think the main advantage of analog live desks over digital is that you have very few toys built into the desk to mess the sound up with.

[Jim Williams]

The operator makes far more difference.

[bblackstone]

For live analog boards it's definitely Midas. The Midas H3000 would probably be most available. Midas XL3 or XL4 are usually preferred over the H3000 by "analog" mixers. They are no longer in production but still available from some rental companies.

[bblackstone]

Originally Posted by absoluteenergy

gimme the digi co desks with the pretty touch screens and huuuuuuuge pre amp gain and il be happy, sd7 and 9 are tastey.

+1 here! Live audio is a digital world now and the Digico consoles sound great.

[fifthcircle]

For those that love Midas, have you had the chance to mix on a Paragon? Great sounding live board, but you almost never see them out there.

As LX has said, though, at the end of the day, there are so many things that go into a PA mix that are not going to be as important for a studio mix. Get a person behind the console who knows what they are doing, time for a good sound check, a band that understands live playing (with arrangements that work live as opposed to the studio arrangements) and you'll get a great show. Of the people that I've seen live over the years, the person that seemed to get that the most was Peter Gabriel. His show was fantastic on all levels, but it didn't sound like the albums.

--Ben

[M4-10]

The board is possibly one of the least important things with regards to sonics in a live setting.

In order of importance:

The band.
The room and the audience in it.
The sound of the band in the room before the PA is involved (drums, guitar amplifiers).
The speakers and their placement, and the sound operator.
The board and outboard equipment.

[jasonraboin]

I would say the Midas XL4 is the Neve of the live world.
But if you want cleanest, closest to studio quality, I would look at the Studer Vista for digital and the Yamaha PM5000 for analog. It never really caught on, but the PM5000 is a very very clean and great sounding console.

[ray_subsonic]

Originally Posted by recorder2

Is there a 'Neve 88RS' of the touring world?

That would be a MIDAS XL4 ..

Running with this analogy, a Neve 88V or VR would be a MIDAS Heritage 3000 ... And So on and So Forth ... You'll find people are pretty unanimous about this .. I'll even roll with all of the other MIDAS XL and Heritage Series Boards .. (XL200, XL250, XL3, Heritage 1000, 2000, etc ..)

The other blokes are right though .. I don't particularly favour the MIDAS Italian City Series .. Dodgy build quality, somewhat like Berlusconi ..

[ray_subsonic]

Originally Posted by Jim Williams

The operator makes far more difference.

Jim, in this case, I think an operator is far more potent with good tools to do the job.

[ray_subsonic]

Originally Posted by jasonraboin

The PM5000 is a very very clean and great sounding console.

+1. Agreed. Great console. Also the ATI Paragon, and the Cadac J console.

For Digital, Digico SD Series & Soundcraft Vi6. Haven't played on the Studer Vista yet, nor the Midas digital consoles.

[jude]

Originally Posted by LX3

I think the main advantage of analog live desks over digital is that you have very few toys built into the desk to mess the sound up with.

Well said!
ive been to too many gigs lately where the FOH guy was so busy editing plugins that he wasnt noticing what was going wrong on stage. you dont need a million plugins to make a gig sound good.

a few compressors and gates, a reverb or 2 and a well tuned PA is all that you really need.

(let the flame war begin)

[Matti]

If you take it easy its much easier to use the few plugins you would need ( instead of the rack stuff ) and the total recall and free routing ,especially if you have had rehearsals.
-I feel this way although I don't do PA

Matti

[Snap]

Live audio is a digital world now

Sad but true.

Those were great times, eh? When we had the chances to use XL4s (sometimes even XL3s) or the huge PM5000s, Venues.... We did just the job and it all was fine and clean. These days we have digital stuff for "convenience". They're so compact! yes, but it's all way more complex, slow and tedious and doesn't sound any better than the old gear. I thank god every time I put my hands on an old (out of fashion) analog console for a show. It was so damn fast and easy to do a good sound check. Everything is there right on hand all the time.

I have nothing against digital. What I hate and cannot understand is why the heck they have to be so compact messing up the intuitive, natural and fast workflow we had in the past. Now we are surfing menus, switching layers, changing modes, arranging the I/O matrix programming hot keys, programming lots of very slow to setup effects. It takes three to five seconds properly setting all the knobs in an analog compressor on the fly and about the same the Eq in a console channel. In how many digital consoles you can do this?

[jasonraboin]

Originally Posted by jude

Well said!
you dont need a million plugins to make a gig sound good.

a few compressors and gates, a reverb or 2 and a well tuned PA is all that you really need.

(let the flame war begin)

While this is certainly true, the argument is often not to be had with the FOH engineer, but with the artist. Now they all use Pro Tools at home they know just enough to expect us to replicate every little effect that is on the record.

Before, the limitations of space, available hands, channels, etc. would limit this, as it did in the studio, but now all bets are off.

Also, what is being done in the studio to make many "artists" passable, is also necessary live to make it listenable. There just aren't that many younger bands out there playing at a high level, understanding dynamics, space, and arrangement. They don't have to anymore.

[absoluteenergy]

Originally Posted by Snap

What I hate and cannot understand is why the heck they have to be so compact messing up the intuitive, natural and fast workflow we had in the past.

cus theyre easier to lift into FoH

Originally Posted by Snap

Now we are surfing menus, switching layers, changing modes, arranging the I/O

yeh.... only when the MADI fails at its job......

Originally Posted by Snap

It takes three to five seconds properly setting all the knobs in an analog compressor on the fly and about the same the Eq in a console channel. In how many digital consoles you can do this?

pretty much all of them from the ls9 upwards in price and quality, also means i dont have to hide under the desk to do it with the rack

at home im a ribbon/tape/8 track fader riding/analog purist (except when i play with the virus ti) but at work i thank the heavens for total recall and digital workflow

i love to work on analog desk live, they do feel loverly, period. i am very happy to find venues with their own desks that i dont have to set up so much.
but when i have to turn up in an empty field or hall and fly and stack the system from scratch before every one else turns up, its all about BNCing it up to the max and then shouting abuse at the lampies for being so slow while i blast them with pink noise as i wait for the bands to turn up.

[Snap]

pretty much all of them from the ls9 upwards in price and quality

Really? I don't know how you do it. but I cannot go that fast and easy on them. Perhaps the "fastest" desk for me is the PM5, perhaps because I'm very used to it, and close to them come the Digicos. But I still find way more easier using any analog. And I can still operate more than one channel at the same time. Which is not all that strange at the first song in a show or in certain complex mixes all along the show. I cannot do that in any digital console I know. It's not a matter of speeding or rushing things. When you have a drummer hitting a kick drum for three minutes or more he gets bored, they usually start to hit it weaker or uneven. If you manage to do it right in less than 30 seconds you'll have a consistent kick (if he has the technique to do it). Everybody hates sound checks. It's so boring and annoying. Perhaps the only weird guys who can enjoy a sound check are us behind the consoles. This is why I always want to go fast over the channels and in my own experience digital consoles slow things every time.

Loads of plugins. That's fine. Comps and gates per channel and at least four parallel effects at a time. Lovely at first instance. But in my experience at least the budget Yamahas from the M7CL and below, crap the sound whenever you set any of these things in. I badly prefer just six (nothing fancy but doing the job right) dbx 166XL, no gates available and a single old Lexicon Reflex instead of crap per channel plugins like those. Every time.

Total recall. Yes, that's a cool feature. Everybody loving digital consoles praises it. Did you ever lost your pen drive before a show or a sound check? Or forgot it at the hotel? Did you ever found that your saved file is corrupted and doesn't load anymore? Or is corrupted and the console works in a weird way of finally freezes and there's nothing you can do? Yes these things happen. With an analog console I can start from zero, pre setting all the needed channels in a sudden and having the band sounding about right in less than a song. I cannot do that in a digital console. A typical case, the tour party arriving late to the venue or even at the show time. I can jump out from the truck and get ready to start in five minutes sounding almost right with no sound check at all. I did it a few times even in big festivals. I prefer to stay away from digital consoles when these not uncommon things happen.

[GZsound]

I seriously doubt that any mixer can overcome the massive amount of background noise at a typical live venue..

There is a reason why the SM58 is the industry standard live vocal mic...and it isn't because of the quality of the sound.

In today's digital recording world, you could use a Behringer mixer for the front end and simply use software to clean up the signal chain, denoise the signal..etc. The mixer has very little to do with the quality of the recording.

[recorder2]

You reckon keeping the amps offstage [in a large setting] or just as far as possible away from other mics, using IEMs, and even having the drumkit behind a plexiglas gobo setup is the way to go on this? That unless the source is as clean as possible the mix is just going to be kind of a mess?

I mean the number of amazing sounding live shows I've been to I can count on one hand. And I've been to plenty...

Best live sound quality ever was Queen + Paul Rodgers.

I mean I'm not even sure I can rank a number two. They were that far ahead of everything else I've ever heard live.

Not a bad guy to have doing the live mix, of course (TK). We've all probably seen his video on Youtube discussing that tour.

[Thomas W. Bethe]

I used a Soundcraft 500 for recording and for live sound and always found it to be an excellent console in terms of built quality and sound. I went to the DiGiCo seminar recently and their boards are very nicely built but the instructor could not get the SM-58 he was using for the demo to come up on the board. Turns out someone was playing with the board before the demo and turned it into a 32 out 1 in mixer and he was on a channel that was not the input channel. It took him a couple of minutes to figure out what was going on. That made me laugh but it is not something I would want to happen in a live situation. The instructor handled it very well turning the operations demo into a hands on troubleshooting demo. FWIW

[Nathanael PCB]

Originally Posted by Snap

It takes three to five seconds properly setting all the knobs in an analog compressor on the fly and about the same the Eq in a console channel. In how many digital consoles you can do this?

The Soundcraft Vi6 is the business for quick work flow. Pots sticking out of touch screens, smart GUI, backlit faders colour coded so you always know where you are. Plus the console is just a controller, all the audio is in a rack.

I cut my teeth on a large format Soundcraft K3 in theatre and would happily have one of those to mix on all the time. Great preamps, loads of headroom, good muting system, and I always found the EQ so easy to use.

[Snap]

Yes, the Vi6 is one of the best ones in workflow and ease of use. You can learn the whole console in a short time even if you never seen one before. I've only used them a few times. I remember I found quite weird having a very unreal fader range. Like using mini faders in a cheapo home studio console. They are physically 100 mm faders actually, but everything happens in the top part. When you do a kinda -5 dB fader movement the desk is doing like -20 dB or so. the lower half of the faders are almost useless. It's like a big minus infinite area. I don't know if this is corrected in current versions but it was really annoying and hard to deal with. You cannot be precise. I didn't liked it at all.

[Snap]

Turns out someone was playing with the board before the demo and turned it into a 32 out 1 in mixer and he was on a channel that was not the input channel. It took him a couple of minutes to figure out what was going on. That made me laugh but it is not something I would want to happen in a live situation.

These kind of things happen quite often. Unless you tour with your own rig, You usually don't have session files for every single digital console you may find out there. So many times you have to deal with supposedly zeroed consoles which have weird previous configurations inside.

Another typical case with M7CLs and budget Yamahas is that you cannot save or load your session alone. You save and load the whole console memory every time. All the sessions at once. Think of a festival. Every sound tech loads his pen drive, so when you leave after your sound check the next guy will be erasing your work and your session won't be in the console anymore. Better keep your pen drive like a treasure or you'll be starting your show with a blank console or having a weird previous configuration inside. Your sound check settings have gone with no trace. Scary, eh?