airickess wrote:]Exactly. I became weary of worrying about all the delicate connections (each one being a point of failure) both inside and outside of the computer. I've had sample rates be off, power supplies go dead and preamps that needed to be power-cycled to work again. All things I never experience with the hardware mixer.
To be fair I've spent plenty of time chasing sample rate and word clock issues on hardware based digital mixing consoles. Yeah if you're dealing with simple little desks where you're only using a series of analog I/O right on the back of the console then it's unlikely you'll run into that. But as soon as you're dealing with digital snakes, Dante, a computer that is recording and/or playing back via a digital interface (all things you need to regularly do in the theatrical world) issues pop up. I've spent just as much time troubleshooting this crap in the Yamaha realm as I have in software consoles or any manufacturer's crap really.
I've had PLENTY of power supply failures in hardware console land as well. Maybe it's just because I've been around long enough to have spent years in the analog console world. But I've seen more analog desks die from power supply failures than any of my computer based systems. (knock on wood here... I don't think I've had a computer PS failure on a show... maybe one has failed on my ever and that's over a LOT of computers I've been responsible for maintaining and/or using).
Yeah I'll give you that I've never had to power cycle my preamps on a hardware console.
Except of course when it was Behringer Preamps hooked to a Yamaha via ADAT optical.
But since I got rid of all my ADA8000s several years back I have not had to do that on my AMP or SAC systems either.
Don't get me wrong, I still agree with you here. I'm just saying that it's not like hardware consoles are problem free, especially if you're comparing apples to apples with regards to feature set, I/O count, capabilities, etc... I've been spending more and more time behind Digico SD9s (hooked up to Aviom Pro 64 digital snake systems) lately and I've spent plenty of time swearing at them as well. Just over different things than I have with SAC. I love their abilities and architecture and sound. Don't care for the Digico UI all that much.
The difference is that if you're working in situations where you have to set up and tear down every day, the software based console will likely need a lot of TLC to keep it working properly and you'll want to have a spare for everything you possibly can. The good thing I would point out is that with most of the software/computer consoles you can actually afford to carry one spare for each component that may fail. How many can afford to do that with their Digico desk or a Yamaha CL series? I know I've never worked any place that has spares of these unless they have two performance spaces in the same venue perhaps you could run and steal the desk from the other theatre. (assuming it's not in use) Other than that.. you're usually SOL.