LOve your desk, new 1.9 software is great. BUT I cant believe that you have not made the lowcut a bit more useful. It sounds fine, but to be honest the 6db/oct (right?) simply is not efficient enough for Live sound. Please, please, please give us the option of at least an 18db/oct and better yet an option of anywhere from 6-48db/oct. I have been hoping for this to appear in an update since I first got the desk, but no dice so far. It really is absolutely crucial to making this desk efficient and quick to work on - right now I have to do all lowcuts in waves multirack, to get a proper welldefined bottom-end.
Musical is not good enough for live sound. I want efficient Playing in front of thousands of people on huge PA systems requires a tight and clean bottom end, and the 6db/oct lowcut simply does not clear up the low end well enough for an ultra transparent mix, which you need for demanding venues and rooms. You should take a look at the Avid desks. The venue desk has an absolutely perfect lowcut for live sound! Preserving the fundamentals, getting rid of the messy stuff
A steep filter certainly messes with the phase, but that not necessarily a bad thing. Low cutting a kick og bass, you want that “hump” that phaseshift gives you. It’s part of what we are used to and like to hear from good filters.
The high pass is 12 db/octave. You can try using the low eq band with a tight Q in conjunction with the high pass, I’ve seen it done with acceptable results to the operator, I haven’t found the need myself.
If you want to eliminate low frequency “gak”, use an aux-fed sub arrangement, this will elimimate any undesireds inputs from the subs completely.
The demand for a steeper lowcut has nothing to do with genres, it has to do with how you mix. I do mixes that sound like a record, not mixes that does the job. In order to do that in a live situation, you need a much more clear, processed and well-defined bottom end, since you are not mixing for a home stereo. I have no problem with 6 or 12db LPF, but they belong in my studio Yamaha LS9 has the same old-school lowcut, that forces you to use the lowest parametric band to clear things up properly.
Weird that people seem offended by this. I just want to make a good desk great, and this along with a better limiter is what’s missing. And pro looking T surfaces - I dont mind the workflow on the surfaces, but I certainly do understand why people are skeptic, it feels like you’re handling a fisher-price console.
The demand for a steeper lowcut has nothing to do with genres, it has to do with how you mix. I do mixes that sound like a record, not mixes that does the job. In order to do that in a live situation, you need a much more clear, processed and well-defined bottom end, since you are not mixing for a home stereo. I have no problem with 6 or 12db LPF, but they belong in my studio Yamaha LS9 has the same old-school lowcut, that forces you to use the lowest parametric band to clear things up properly.
Weird that people seem offended by this. I just want to make a good desk great, and this along with a better limiter is what’s missing. And pro looking T surfaces - I dont mind the workflow on the surfaces, but I certainly do understand why people are skeptic, it feels like you’re handling a fisher-price console.
I very much agree that it’d be a nice feature, it just sounds a but like people who insist you “need” dynamic eq and multiband compression on every channel. Maybe you do though, it’s certainly a feature I’d make use of if it existed.
To your last comment… Yeah I guess? The T wasn’t designed for tour and as such doesn’t need the same bombproof construction of the modular, or an m7.
I Think these claims has roots in the fact that livesound today are just up to higher standards. All shows I watch sound much better than 15 years ago, and digital desks has helped us bring some things from the studio into the live world - more processing and more well balanced and even mixes. It’s great!!
But it also means that people need more and more tools to shape their sound, and this is why we see people “needing” dynamic EQ. And to be fair the 901 has been here for ages, so I don’t think it’s silly to ask for. But the fact that it is now available in the cheap ilive system is pretty impressive. I love this system, but it has its good and bad sides. I would have loved to see a better compressor and preamp, though they are certainly as good as most other desks. But when you’ve handled a Vi6 or any Vi desk you hear those to things instantly. Brilliant preamp and absolutely fantastic compressor.
And yeah, I had hoped for something a little more sturdy and solid feeling for the money I paid for the R72. I’m careful with my gear though
I Think these claims has roots in the fact that livesound today are just up to higher standards. All shows I watch sound much better than 15 years ago, and digital desks has helped us bring some things from the studio into the live world - more processing and more well balanced and even mixes. It’s great!!
But it also means that people need more and more tools to shape their sound, and this is why we see people “needing” dynamic EQ. And to be fair the 901 has been here for ages, so I don’t think it’s silly to ask for. But the fact that it is now available in the cheap ilive system is pretty impressive. I love this system, but it has its good and bad sides. I would have loved to see a better compressor and preamp, though they are certainly as good as most other desks. But when you’ve handled a Vi6 or any Vi desk you hear those to things instantly. Brilliant preamp and absolutely fantastic compressor.
And yeah, I had hoped for something a little more sturdy and solid feeling for the money I paid for the R72. I’m careful with my gear though
I’m very surprised you mentioned the preamps, I’ve found the sonic quality of them superior to anything Yamaha offers, or even the Venue system. Not a huge fan of the Vi workflow, or layout, so I stay away from them for the most part.
Nono, I’m not comparing the pre’s to yamahas. Wow, that would be quite the insult! The preamps are good, no doubt. They remind me of the DigiCo desks, a tad mellow sounding, but good. But the Midas Pro, and Vi desks are just in a different league concerning the pre’s.
The beautiful thing about the Vi desks, is that everything on them sounds fantastic. Pres, Filters, EQ, Gate, Comp, Deesser, and gorgeus reverbs, so you get the mix right faster in my experience. To be fair the desk is many times the price of the iLive, so no competition in bang for the buck. The workflow is probably the easiest out there, I have had lots of engineers flying within minutes, so I’m quite surprised you feel that way
The workflow is probably the easiest out there, I have had lots of engineers flying within minutes, so I’m quite surprised you feel that way
I guess I should clarify, I find it difficult to get to what I need to. It’s not the logical menu structure of a Yamaha, but its not the same direct-access style of an iLive or larger Midas frame. Personally I find the Venue Profile one of the best physically laid out desk, but not flexible enough in terms of how one uses it, and from a software perspective. I love the lack of dedicated faders on the iLive.
I think the SD5 is still one of my favorite consoles, but again that’s way out of the price range of comparison.
just as a thought experiment, I’d love to see what a $140k Allen and Heath digital would look like
i like the idea of the requested feature, to have it less complicated (one more xtra switch on every channel)how bout
a overall setting - switch the desk either to “soft” or “hard” filter.
i do most of the time LR sub setups ,much better sub conrol,we are a small company (biggest events 5000 people), small nexo (geo s8 15 cabs each side) with the cd 18 and its fantastic (but you have to rig the small basses cd 12).
But the majority of places you go, its not possible to do a LR Sub setup, when you use the desk for touring, and not as part of a complete production. But yes, it works quite well in places with seperate subs and ultra sub for instance.
I think it would be great to just have an extra box that you could switch between 6, 12, 18, 24, and 48db/oct. Problem solved. It certainly cant be a DSP problem
I like the digico desks, but they have a learning curve thats a little more challenging than the rest I think, but are excellent for a tour production!
digico is nice but way too heavy…reminds me of my old neve -industrial gear[ ]
quote:Originally posted by vilddyr
But the majority of places you go, its not possible to do a LR Sub setup, when you use the desk for touring, and not as part of a complete production. But yes, it works quite well in places with seperate subs and ultra sub for instance.
I think it would be great to just have an extra box that you could switch between 6, 12, 18, 24, and 48db/oct. Problem solved. It certainly cant be a DSP problem
I like the digico desks, but they have a learning curve thats a little more challenging than the rest I think, but are excellent for a tour production!
For reasons established in other threads subs off aux or even LR Sub is not recommendable, unless you use the aux or the Sub mix per channel only as a switch. If you change the level of the sub mix per channel to be different from the main mix, it will have negative impact on the phase coherence and the linearity of your overall system.
Of course making the lowcut switchable to higher orders of filtering will be a DSP problem. The higher the order/steepness, the higher the DSP usage.
Anyways, I’d like to see that feature too. Making it global, setting it for ALL channels from preference, would make it pretty useless again. You’ll need to decide PER CHANNEL what the right order/steepness is.
Would you be happy to lose one of your other filters in order to create a 4th order filter? That’s an easy implementation possibility. You’d just gang the filter coefficients to its neighbour, and they’d already be cascaded. To make a 3rd order filter, a 1st order filter could instead be calculated, and that would run at no extra DSP cost. I am of course making the assumption that we’re using biquad filters here
eg: you want a 4th order HPF:
your MF bell filter would disappear, and its coefficients would mirror that of the LF filter, creating a cascade of two biquad filters.
eg: you want a 3rd order LPF:
your HM bell filter would disappear, and its coefficients would be recalculated for a first order LPF with the same frequency parameter as the HF filter. This creates a cascade of a 1st and 2nd order filter.
While on the subject, I don’t think you need higher order filters to create shelving filters with an adjustable transition bandwidth (or slope).
EDIT: After a quick look at this in MATLAB, the downside of cascading two 2nd order filters would be that the centre frequency would sit at -6dB, not -3dB, which is what standard 4th order Butterworth polynomials would give. Same applies between a 1st/2nd order cascade and 3rd order Butterworth polynomials.
And yes,cascading two butterworth filters of the same order and frequency results in a filter with 6dB point as edge. This is how Linkwitz-Riley filters are constructed.
But maybe the shelving EQ bands could be done with selectable slopes (at least 6dB in addition to the 12dB standard?) and the locut/highpass EQ could be with selectable Q?
Thinking about it, a dedicated fourth order LPF/HPF would actually require the same number of coefficients (and therefore multiplications and additions/subtractions) as a biquadratic filter, so 3rd and 4th order filters could be implemented without additional DSP processing cost if dedicated HPF/LPF algorithms were implemented for each filter order. However, extra unit delays are used, so an additional 50%/100% extra data memory would be required for each filter.