gdougherty wrote:The x32 is a terrific board for what it is, and it does as well or better than the soundcraft competition in many areas.
Its a medium size digital desk that's not meant for large productions but it works well if its big enough for the task at hand.
Behringer is also doing things mostly right with OSC and MIDI support such that people have written some nifty software to better handle scene management and recall.
I wouldn't imagine it works well for bigger theatre productions with only 32 channels, but that doesn't mean it isn't a worthwhile desk.
Yeah, good points. I didn't mean to insinuate that I thought it was inadequate for everyone, just my needs.
This middle market theatre world is where SAC really could have and should have cleaned up I think. But it would have required both some advertising of the product and less attitude about mixing with a mouse or "enjoy the ride" commentary. And it could have and should have done well in areas like installed sound and such.... but again it would have taken both marketing and listening to those that do that kind of work.
The reality is you usually don't need 24 monitor mixers for a 4 or 5 piece band playing in a bar or small club. You don't need a subwoofer console either.
Sure it's nice to have some of that, but as you're finding out and reporting an X32 works just fine for that. And so do many of the other affordable digital desks that have come on the market. It just took a while for them to get out decent products that filled the modest priced Allen and Heath GL series market, but bigger than something you can mix on a 01V96.
SAC has been a great tool for me. It is far better than the hodge podge of 2 or more analog and digital mixers all feeding into a DSP of some sort I used in the past. Much more flexible than that kind of mess and no surprise it sounds better because there are less than half as many A to D and D to A stages as before. But we all know the things that held it up from reaching it's full potential. But most of the things it does well, like fairly high channel counts, complex scene recalls, integration of a full function multi-track playback DAW, etc. are not the selling points you use to sell to the masses that just want a tool like the X32.