I am super close to purchasing a T112/idr64 for our church. Would like to buy today from Full Compass or Monday to take advantage of a free iPad promo by AMS in California that expires end of February (and I need the board now anyway). But my sound installer keeps on slamming the iLive stuff as saying I will be taking a step backwards on sound quality compared to my current GL3200 with our out-board Presonus compressors. He says LS9, M7CL, Avid, or Sound Craft is going to blow away the iLive on sound quality. His company also provides sound for big name touring groups, does installs for churches, and he mixes if the groups do not provide their own FOH guy. I have seen his setup at the local Switchfoot concert, NewsBoys and Third Day in California, so I am not completely dismissing his experience or ears.
So he says that for the one festival last year he used the T112/idr48 setup on he was able to mix on it all day and that as compressors and effects and tasks were added to the chain that the sound quality noticably degraded. That the DSP could not keep up and sound quality suffered. Of course he shared this in front of my entire sound team and worship team, so everyone at my church now thinks I am an idiot for even considering this board and not taking his advice.
I am in love with the iLive stuff. I have played with it at NAMM and Infocomm for the last 2 years. And in January spent 4 days on the NAMM floor playing with these consoles and comparing them to the SoundCraft Si2 and Vi1. These A&H boards are awesome and I think the best feature set for the money out there, plus I love how A&H keeps on updating these boards and adding new features.
I can’t find any negative sound quality reviews on the Internet. I know you forum guys probably love the boards since you own them, but why would my Sound Installer slam this board so hard? Can anyone confirm his claims? I won’t even be buying through him, so not sure his angle. He says you won’t see these rigs on professional tours and will only see them in churches operated by amateur operators.
Your “sound installer” seems to have an agenda of some type, who knows. I’ve been using an LS9/32 since they were available in the US (late 2006), and my iLive-T112/idr48 (& R72/idr32) sound better - cleaner, more “open”, and comparing these to a GL3200 (2200? 3300?) is just ignorant.
There is a reason you haven’t heard any negative feedback about the iLive sound quality…
I am super close to purchasing a T112/idr64 for our church. Would like to buy today from Full Compass or Monday to take advantage of a free iPad promo by AMS in California that expires end of February (and I need the board now anyway). But my sound installer keeps on slamming the iLive stuff as saying I will be taking a step backwards on sound quality compared to my current GL3200 with our out-board Presonus compressors. He says LS9, M7CL, Avid, or Sound Craft is going to blow away the iLive on sound quality. His company also provides sound for big name touring groups, does installs for churches, and he mixes if the groups do not provide their own FOH guy. I have seen his setup at the local Switchfoot concert, NewsBoys and Third Day in California, so I am not completely dismissing his experience or ears.
So he says that for the one festival last year he used the T112/idr48 setup on he was able to mix on it all day and that as compressors and effects and tasks were added to the chain that the sound quality noticably degraded. That the DSP could not keep up and sound quality suffered. Of course he shared this in front of my entire sound team and worship team, so everyone at my church now thinks I am an idiot for even considering this board and not taking his advice.
I am in love with the iLive stuff. I have played with it at NAMM and Infocomm for the last 2 years. And in January spent 4 days on the NAMM floor playing with these consoles and comparing them to the SoundCraft Si2 and Vi1. These A&H boards are awesome and I think the best feature set for the money out there, plus I love how A&H keeps on updating these boards and adding new features.
I can’t find any negative sound quality reviews on the Internet. I know you forum guys probably love the boards since you own them, but why would my Sound Installer slam this board so hard? Can anyone confirm his claims? I won’t even be buying through him, so not sure his angle. He says you won’t see these rigs on professional tours and will only see them in churches operated by amateur operators.
— Jerry
I found myself in a similar situation months ago before making our iLive purchase…excluding the fact that there is a “special” iPad offer from Full Compass, I see no urgency in a rush order …
Here’s what I did, over the last year or so I mixed our shows using different digital consoles, soundcraft, digico, avid, yamahas, even stagetec… you name it…and of course iLive…the show I mixed on the iLive got so many fav reviews that the "brass came down and said to me …"I guess we’re buying this one!!"ending my console shopping…in the end it was a combination of criterias that sold them to the iLive…but they decided… with the help of my professional advice…no amount of persuasion/convincing from the A&H community or anyone else will change that…so do yourself a favour and have fun trying all the products out there…if you can mix you can do it on any of these consoles…the board is the tool not the job…
Jerry I have chosen to mix live orchestral and large Prog shows on an iLive for the last 4 years, using single and dual rack configurations.
My personal opinion is it is one of the best sounding digital mix systems out there, unlike some others it does not run out of system power as you use more facilities, no sacrificing a couple of FX racks so you can have 32 Graphic EQ’s. I would certainly be one of the first to complain if the quality of sound dropped as resources were deployed, as I believe would some of my clients (IEM mixes to opera singers etc.)
Sounds like your supplier has a definite agenda to me.
Go with you instincts chap you won’t regret it, I am sure the system will continue to evolve in the future.
Supplier = dealer = 'who gives me the best margin when I sell a particular system"… I used to be in music retail and that is a pretty straight forward equation. Whatever board he doesn’t like is the one he would make the least money on.
What capacity does your installer influence purchasing decisions for your church?
Does this individual - company have purchasing power, or is it just his/her personal feedback?
Does he have an Installer role or an installed sales role?
Be careful for individuals or companies that talk smack about a product or service. I would question that persons agenda.
It appears this installer had a one time experience with the system. Who knows what specifically went wrong that day. Was the installer technically involved? Get another opinion from someone that knows the truth.
The website from Allen & Heath was recently redesigned.
They did have a user list with many churches and sound / rental companies. Not sure why that list is not available anymore.
Ray is right you need to try them. When we bought ours Full Compass arranged a demo for us. Not sure if they still can do that or not but, it is worth asking. If you were coming to South Texas I would invite you to our church so you could check our iLive out in actual use. We liked it so much at FOH we decided to replace our production room board with another iLive. I have not run into any issues of degrading sound quality.
Comparing an $8k board to a $20k board seems a little odd to me.
Tour systems have to be rider friendly and generaly contain the most asked for equipment, doesn’t mean it’s better just that it is more asked for.
Jerry - Gotta say…I looked at Yamaha prior and found there was no feature to price comparison to the iLive setup. The supplier I purchased the speaker arrays from was also pushing the Roland line and again…no comparion to the iLive for the $$.
Why do you think you see so many small productions use the Mixrack with only a laptop to mix? Because you don’t really need a control surface IF you understand the total operation capabilites of the iLive.
I am sooo pleased to have all the signal processing,remote capabilities and versatility the Ilive brings.
You were told the “…sound quality noticably degraded”"…really? Signal procssing is only as good as the person applying the processing. No doubt the sound CAN be degraded if the signal chain of the processing is not understood by the operator. I am still learning myself ALL the capablites of the iLive and have not found a situation yet where the features were not there for the signal processing I wanted to do to improve the mix. As a volunteer (and yes some of us volunteers do work as well with signed artist),and responsible for due dilegence in purchasing equipment, I did the comparison of feature to price…no brainer for iLive:)
Just fwiw we just ordered an iLive system from Full Compass Tuesday. They have a system the will let you try and evaluate for yourself. I believe it is a T112/48 system. We would have done that, but our old mixer (a mackie sr40* completely quit. We have a peavey mixer hooked up in the mean time. We just needed to get the ball rolling and get a new one as fast as possible. Even going into this kinda “blind” I have no doubt we made a great decision. But as mentioned if you are at all worried ask about the “loaner” system. There is a bit of a waiting list though. When I last asked about it, it would have taken 2-4 weeks before we would have gotten it.
Oh and the iPad deal extends to the iLive systems? My rep, Heather Holy, sent me an email about an iPad deal but it was for the Yamaha consoles. I’ll have to go reread it.
Hey thanks everyone for the advice. I am feeling I am making a good decision going with the iLive T112/iDr64/Aviom purchase through Full Compass. I will buy on Monday.
The iPad deal was through American Music and Sound of Woodland California who are the A & H Distributers for the US. They are at every show like NAMM and Infocomm representing A&H. They had a flyer at NAMM in January saying if you can show you purchased an iLive system before the end of February that they would give you a free iPad. I personally talked to Michael Palmer the National Sales Manager for US A&H and he said it is true. The problem is their website says nothing about it, even though he said it would be on there.
In regards to my “Sound Installer” I will not be purchasing through him as I don’t think I need him to put the console on my desk and rack my IDR64 and run my Cat5 cable (I leave him to hanging speakers and such). He wants to train us, but I think it’s better for me to learn the ins and outs and train my own team. I already have 3 more days of experience on him anyway. The NAMM guys running the booth like Michael Palmer and Dave Lewty are super knowledgeable on the boards and answered all my questions as I played with it. Thanks guys.
Congrats Matt you made the same move we did from the same board lol. The difference in sound is huge. The sound booth is so empty looking now too. Congrats to the both of you.
The iPad deal was through American Music and Sound of Woodland California who are the A & H Distributers for the US. They are at every show like NAMM and Infocomm representing A&H. They had a flyer at NAMM in January saying if you can show you purchased an iLive system before the end of February that they would give you a free iPad. I personally talked to Michael Palmer the National Sales Manager for US A&H and he said it is true. The problem is their website says nothing about it, even though he said it would be on there.
— Jerry
I don’t suppose an iDR-32, M-MMO-A and an iDR D-OUT are considered a system? [ ]
The iPad deal was through American Music and Sound of Woodland California who are the A & H Distributers for the US. They are at every show like NAMM and Infocomm representing A&H. They had a flyer at NAMM in January saying if you can show you purchased an iLive system before the end of February that they would give you a free iPad. I personally talked to Michael Palmer the National Sales Manager for US A&H and he said it is true. The problem is their website says nothing about it, even though he said it would be on there.
— Jerry
I don’t suppose an iDR-32, M-MMO-A and an iDR D-OUT are considered a system? [ ]
Scott
My rep as Full Compass emailed me the promotion. Looks like you need a surface and a mixrack to qualify. But it wouldn’t hurt to ask. FWIW it also apparently needed to be mailed by yesterday. Considering we started ordering ours February 3rd I’m hoping to still qualify. But I can’t send it in until I get the Serial #'s off the gear. Here’s hoping it works.
My rep as Full Compass emailed me the promotion. Looks like you need a surface and a mixrack to qualify. But it wouldn’t hurt to ask. FWIW it also apparently needed to be mailed by yesterday. Considering we started ordering ours February 3rd I’m hoping to still qualify. But I can’t send it in until I get the Serial #'s off the gear. Here’s hoping it works.
Ordered a T112/48 Feb 22, 2011.
Thanks for the confirmation Matt! I pretty much deduced it would take a full system to get a deal like that, but if they would sell me one for half price I’d take it. [ ] I’ve seem some more news about the iPad 2 supposedly being announced tomorrow so I guess we’ll find out soon. I’ve got a nephew that works at a big Apple store so maybe he could get me a deal on the original if they mark them down at all.
My “system” arrived yesterday, ordered Feb 15 also through FC, promptly fired it (iDR32) up, connected the wireless router and proceeded to put it through the paces. Worked flawlessly and sounded good listening in the cans. Seemed responsive with my Lenova X61, which just meets the minimum recommended. Bet yours is coming soon, I’m in NE and it doesn’t take long for shipping to here.
On the iPad promotion (American Music and Sound) they said that the system just needed to be purchased between January 13th and February 28th, 2011 to qualify. They said that even though the form says the application (with serials on it) has to be mailed (postmarked) by Feb 28th that they would still honor the promotion if it’s mailed late. I will be mailing mine when I get my serial numbers in a couple of weeks.
Looks like ours will be here tomorrow. Can’t wait to play with it. However I’m not gonna start the install until Monday. Right now our “snake” runs through the ceiling and is at least 100’ long. I’m gonna put the Mix Rack in the amp room next to the stage, but that will require some rewiring and soldering. Especially since the current run is a bunch of wires that aren’t labeled. Arg. Anywho figure I best start the install when I have a little more time in case I run into any complications. But who knows when it gets here I may just decide not to sleep for a day or two.
we sold our LS9 to move over to iLive…and would not go back, nor would our clients who, in a world where for the most part noise is just noise to most people, now insist on iLive as they have noticed the significant improvement in audio quality.
Your installer sounds like he has a hidden ‘Yamaha agenda’, is he a dealer?.. good luck with that one. [ ]
completely quit. We have a peavey mixer hooked up in the mean time. We just needed to get the ball rolling and get a new one as fast as possible. Even going into this kinda “blind” I have no doubt we made a great decision. But as mentioned if you are at all worried ask about the “loaner” system. There is a bit of a waiting list though. When I last asked about it, it would have taken 2-4 weeks before we would have gotten it.
]
] I’ve seem some more news about the iPad 2 supposedly being announced tomorrow so I guess we’ll find out soon. I’ve got a nephew that works at a big Apple store so maybe he could get me a deal on the original if they mark them down at all.
But who knows when it gets here I may just decide not to sleep for a day or two.