Hi,
New member… I’m Ash Webber from Emerge Church in Warner, QLD Australia.
Our current mixer is an Yamaha LS9 which has served us well for past 9 yrs.
We currently run 36 inputs (additional inputs through ADAT interface), Aviom A16ii for band, and 4 Stereo IEM mixes from a single LS9.
This is a fairly big load on the LS9, and a single FOH engineer to also do IEM mixes.
At present, our LS9 has maxed out mix busses in creating sub-mixes for Avioms, and FX.
Our current analogue multicores are also maxed out. So with these two issues, our LS9 cannot give us any additional mix functionality.
We have over past 2 yrs, held a conference and hired in an analogue split to run monitors from second console. This has worked well, but it is a lot of work to repatch analogue from a single console to 2 console configuration.
So… looking at upgrade options. I am considering the dLive C3500 or S5000 surfaces.
I need to consider ease of use for volunteers, so I would leaning towards S5000 to gain extra faders.
What are the main functional differences between C3500 and S5000. Is the extra $$$ worth it for the S5000? I am keen for any advice between the two surfaces.
Thanks.
Regards, Ash Webber
Hi Ash,
we are just up the road from you in Bridgeman Downs with an S5000 setup. Feel free to PM me if you would like to catch up in person?
Brad
The S5000 has four additional faders, which probably isn’t a big difference in the overall scheme of things.
The S5000 does have additional physical controls for parameter adjustments (near the screens), which can be nice when you’re in the heat of the battle - less button pressing/holding while you’re using alternate controls.
Where the S5000 does have major advantage over the C-Class is: redundant power supplies and extra I/O slots. If you’re thinking about adding a Waves card and/or Dante and/or AES expansion, the S-Class will accommodate all three, whereas the C-Class can only accommodate one. We have an AES I/O card in our C3500. Other differences are relatively minor… for example, the S-Class has “finer” metering - more lights per segment than the C-Class.
We evaluated the S5000 against the C3500 and couldn’t justify the added expense for the S-Class. We invested the difference in a better DSP for the rig.
Both are excellent surfaces; I don’t think you can go wrong with either. I’m sure other people will chime in with some additional points of view.