shmick wrote:http://www.avid.com/US/products/S3L-System/features
The S3L System features a modular architecture, enabling you to easily scale it to meet your production needs. Go from 16 I/O channels with one Stage 16 box up to 64 channels with four. Rack your I/O in one location for easy supervision, or place each box as close as possible to the source, anywhere in the venue, for maximum flexibility—up to 328 feet (100 meters) away. And with Ethernet AVB connectivity, all you need are lightweight, inexpensive Cat5e cables, putting an end to expensive, bulky analog snakes.
Slick!
And for those of us who like real control surfaces, this goodie:
Channel strips/faders: 16 (up to 6 fader banks)
I'm assuming (could be incorrect) that "banks" means multiple control surfaces can be used ("layers" is the term normally applied to overloading existing faders). Then again, it could simply mean that you can divide the 16 faders into 6 groups. Whatever, I'm assuming that if you want to spend the money you can hook up multiple fader packs to the system (e.g., FOH/Monitors). So putting two of them at FOH shouldn't be impossible.
Plug-ins won't be cheap (and DRM will be miserable) but if you can spend $30,000 for the board, what's a couple more thousand dollars? At least the plugs will probably work on the remote stations. And there are a wide variety of plugins to choose from. From the page:
Total control at your fingertips
Because VENUE software directly supports studio plug-ins, you can access and tweak all plug-ins right from your system's console surface. Need to move inputs? Simply call up the plug-in rack on screen and instantly make changes with a click of a button. And because you can instantly recall and automate all plug-in settings using the Snapshot function, you can spend more time refining your mix than frantically dialing up settings for each next song.
And, for those who deal with guest engineers, there's also this:
Take your VENUE show files with you on a USB key for use on any Avid live system
Yes, $30K might put it out of the range of most typical SAC users. If I were starting off today, I'd save up the money and get one of these rather than buying SAC. Buy once, cry once (I'm assuming, of course, that this system isn't a total dog and DRM hasn't completely crippled it; I gave up on Pro Tools after buying my second Digi-Design system and swore I'd never deal with them again, but...).
Cheers,
Randy Hyde