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Portable consoles for recording music?


Jim Feeley

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There's a valuable divergence in the recent/current Reaper thread. It starts here in this post from Bernie:

 

 

Phil responds:

On 5/29/2018 at 9:08 AM, Philip Perkins said:

I'm pretty sure that most of the boards in this class share the same or a very similar digital "engine", whether they have Behringer, Soundcraft, AH, Midas, etc nameplates.  I've had very good luck with Reaper and a non-new Mac laptop recording off a USB feed from these consoles (that belonged to venues I was working in)--it generally worked as advertised.  I kind of gave up on this style of board for a console that I'd own because the build quaility was so flimsy, I had reliability issues, I got very used to having way more "plugin" style effects with more control and, more importantly, the ability to save a lot of complex "scenes" or setups.   It seems like there are two paths you can take with decent sounding cheap boards anymore--ones like this Soundcraft, with actual (although pretty cheesey feeling) faders and USB output for a daw, vs. way more "savability", onboard recording w/o a computer, almost no moving parts (ie knobs and faders), far deeper feature set (incl feedback control, comps, limiters and VCA groups) and smaller size.   After 2 consoles of the Sig22MT general type I went the other way (QSC TM16): the scene saving, onboard fx, recording and small size vs: airline baggage BS have really made a diff.  On a remote location (ie a foreign country) I can now often have MY console working, with all my presets etc saved, instead of a rental.  Anyhow, if you like the sound and the ergonomics of that Soundcraft go ahead on:  it should rock the DAW thing just fine.  Reaper is a good low $ choice for this if you don't need all the TC and reporting features of Boom Recorder.  I should point out that NONE of these cheapo boards have the ability to be externally clocked (yes, that old discussion), so there is no way to include it in a system with genlocked cameras that is stable over a long roll.   It is very likely that this won't be an issue for you, or I hope it isn't, since I have yet to discover a way to "get there from here" in this regard.  For that kind of system syncability you have to move up several grades of console (Yamaha QL, CL etc), go with a computer interface like RME or a pro-level dedicated recorder like JoeCo.

 

 

The rest of the thread is good too. I'd like the discussion to continue in its own thread/post so it doesn't get lost. Interesting stuff...

 

So it looks like Phil's talking about this:

 

q_mix_tm_16_heroFront2.jpg

More info from QSC:

https://www.qsc.com/live-sound/products/touchmix-mixers/

 

Phil, is that right? If so, what do you think of the virtual sliders? NBD once you're used to them? A bit of a drag, but consider the upsides you mention above, worth the hassle? Something else?

 

Anyone else heading that direction for music/FOHish gigs?

 

 

 

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