Today’s digital consoles have an enormous amount of features already built in, but that’s not the end of the story.
Many can be expanded even further with additional I/O (input and outputs) via stage boxes as well as networking with various other devices like monitor consoles, personal monitoring systems, and recording/broadcast trucks. In addition, there’s often basic (at least) recording to USB onboard, various ways to interface with digital audio workstations (DAW) and recording units, and more.
All of this scalability allows configuring a system depending on the specific needs of the application. It also makes our jobs easier and provides those of us who own and rent gear a better return on investment because our equipment can grow and change as needs change, rather than becoming obsolete after a few years. With that in mind, let’s take a look at options for expansion for a variety of current mixing systems.
The new flagship RIVAGE PM10 from Yamaha consists of the CS-R10 control surface and DSP-R10 DSP engine. The surface offers 38 faders and two 15-inch touch screens, and it links to the DSP engine via a dedicated Cat-5e ring “console network.”
In turn, the engine connects to the RPio622 I/O rack(s) via the HY card slot, with the Yamaha TWINLANe network capable of handling up to 400 audio channels at distances of up to 300 meters from device to device via multi-mode fiber cable. Up to eight RPio racks and two DSP engines can be connected in a single ring. The system can handle 144 input channels and 72 mix buses, with future upgrades will allowing the DSP engines to cascade for a total of 288 channels.
In addition to TWINLANe cards, the HY slots (four on the DSP engine and two slots on the I/O racks) can also accept HY Dante cards that offer 144 channels of I/O at 96 kHz. Each unit also sports two MY option card slots that accept the more than 30 Mini-YGDAI cards Yamaha offers, including processing as well as analog and digital connectivity. Available network protocols include Aviom, CobraNet, EtherSound, MADI, Dante, Optocore, Pivitec, and RockNet100 and RockNet300.
The recently unveiled Allen & Heath DLive Series provides three sizes of surfaces, including the S3000 with 20 faders, 120 channel strips and a touch screen, the S5000 with 28 faders, 168 channel strips and two screens, and the S7000 with 36 faders, 216 channel strips and two screens. Three sizes of MixRacks are also available, all outfitted with the same mix engine and differing only in the number of analog I/O (from 32 to 64 inputs).
The DX32 Expander is a modular I/O unit that provides four 8-channel slots for analog or digital I/O. Up to two DX32s can be connected to the MixRack, and a further DX32 can be connected to a surface. In addition, each surface has dual 128-channel I/O ports while MixRacks offer three 128-channel ports. Network connectivity can be made via Allen & Heath ACE, Dante, MADI, EtherSound, Waves and SoundGrid.
While a MixRack is typically connected to a surface, it can also be controlled at the same time (or even without a surface) using a laptop or iPad, Allen & Heath IP remotes, or third-party controllers via TCP/IP. The DLive Series is also fully compatible with the Allen & Heath ME personal mixing system.
Soundcraft has seven consoles to choose from in the Vi Series, with the largest, the Vi7000, providing 44 faders and five Vistonics II touch screens. It can mix up to 128 inputs. The new Local Rack delivers 384 I/O channels and provides multiple card slots that allow simultaneous use with two Vi Stageboxes, two recording cards, and the Realtime Rack MADI interface.
Each Stagebox can remotely locate 64 mic/line inputs and 32 outputs. Optional AES/EBU, CobraNet, EtherSound, Aviom A-Net, Blu Link, MADI and Dante cards can expand network connectivity, with 128 recording channels available via a MADI or Dante interface. The ViSi Remote app for iPad allows remote control of console mix functions.
The Realtime Rack brings Universal Audio UAD plugins to the Soundcraft platform, with Ultimate Live providing 74 plugins and Core Live supplying 14 plugins.
