Anyone gone digital yet ?

[Danny1969]

I wouldn't expect to see a Digidesign Venue on the pub & club circuit but I see Mackie have a sub 8K digital desk and mix pac now. The idea of only having a cat 5 cable rather than a snake is appealing, as is the use of plugins rather than the normal compressor, reverb, delay outboard. I'm not sure actually that the Mackie can use plugins in the same way the Venue can but I'm sure it's only a matter of time before Behringer and other OEM's start making affordable digital systems ... probably with VST plugin support. In theory you should be able to copy a plug to a USB pen key and load it onto the FOH desk.

[maltingsaudio]

I use a tascam dm 24 for all my gigs, did a 10 piece soul band in june stored the settings, did them again in august hit recall and sound checked them in 5 minutes brilliant! If only i could buy a digi snake with the quality of a multicore and at the same price................

[Danny1969]

Yeah that recall must be very handy in terms of EQ, compressor and delay settings rather than resetting every bit of outboard when you get the same band .... that's the kind of functionality I want for my own band.

I notice the big money systems like the Venue etc have the AD converters on stage, so you plug into that instead of the snake and then the actual desk is really a computer with flying fader controller and dedicated DSP for plugins. I've got the urge to have a go at building such a system using an old G4, D24 + Farm card and some 820 interfaces. With a reasonable controller to get hands on fader control it might be workable live.

[maltingsaudio]

Good luck with that, making it road worthy will be the problem get a shockproof rack! The main criticism I've heard of this sort of system is the fact that the input gains are at the wrong end of the snake when it all goes off, a mad dash to the stage during the second song when the guitarist or keyboard player decides his amp isn't loud enough isn't fun!

[Ten Flew South]

Have a look at the Tascam US2400 Danny for your fader solution. Hankering after one myself.

[Danny1969]

Yeah that's the type of thing, I actually want one for my DAW as well but need PT compatible ones like Command 8's,
I've thought about the gains being the wrong end of the snake and the Digidesign interface gains are controlled in software .... so in theory I could control the mic gains from the FOH position. The biggest drawback is if the program crashes you not only lose all control of audio level but often get a huge blast of white noise as well ... which wouldn't be good