GLD80 Discussion

Rob Spence

Rob Spence

Senior
Jan 11, 2011
897
4
18
Boston Metro North West
www.lynxaudioservices.com
I got a notice from A&H about a great deal on the GLD80. Buy it and get a free 24x12 remote stage box.

So, I am finally tempted.

I have an LS-32 and use Dante for recording and Stage Mix with the iPad. Both features are important to me. I do not need to meet riders. I would like the digital snake but have been reluctant to spend on RIO boxes.

For those who own or use a GLD, what are the drawbacks as you see them?

I am guessing that they are using the sale to reduce inventory in advance of some new announcement this fall. Anyone heard any rumors?

Thanks
Sent from my iPad HD
 
Re: GLD80 Discussion

Rob Spence said:
I got a notice from A&H about a great deal on the GLD80. Buy it and get a free 24x12 remote stage box.

So, I am finally tempted.

I have an LS-32 and use Dante for recording and Stage Mix with the iPad. Both features are important to me. I do not need to meet riders. I would like the digital snake but have been reluctant to spend on RIO boxes.

For those who own or use a GLD, what are the drawbacks as you see them?

I am guessing that they are using the sale to reduce inventory in advance of some new announcement this fall. Anyone heard any rumors?

Thanks
Sent from my iPad HD
Click to expand...

No, I guess that they are using the sale to actually sell product. I don't think the GLD is selling well, at all. Neither is iLive.
 
Re: GLD80 Discussion

Rob Spence said:
I got a notice from A&H about a great deal on the GLD80.


I am guessing that they are using the sale to reduce inventory in advance of some new announcement this fall. Anyone heard any rumors?

Thanks
Sent from my iPad HD
Click to expand...

GLD112.

Does exactly the same thing but you get another bank 8 of faders to play with.

There's a forum for the GLD here.

iLive Forums - GLD Discussions

The main advantage over the LS9 would be the LCD scribble strips, the DCA's and the touchscreen.

The only drawbacks I can really think of would be that other than the FX rack all the processing is pre assigned. Eg. every bus has a GEQ on it, but it's integrated into the bus processing so you can't take that GEQ off the bus and put it on an input (if you wanted to).

You get 20 "mix outs" and 32 "mix buses". A "mix out" is an aux, a matrix, a subgroup or a main mix (eg. LR). A "mix bus" is the same with the addition of FX sends.

You can choose how many of each type of mix you want but you want, but mono mixes have to be allocated in pairs.

I use it set up with 6 mono auxes, 3 stereo groups, 2 mono matricies, 1 stereo matrix, Main LR and 2 unused mixes.

If I wanted to do monitors on it I could set it up to do 8 mono auxes and 6 stereo auxes.

This would use up 20 "mix outs" and leave 12 "mix buses" remaining for FX sends. You could do more FX send buses if you used less mix outs.

It uses a digital snake by design, so you don't have to re-buy all your preamps and converters to achieve this.



Chris
 
Re: GLD80 Discussion

Silas Pradetto said:
No, I guess that they are using the sale to actually sell product. I don't think the GLD is selling well, at all. Neither is iLive.
Click to expand...

I have the feeling from some of the other posts that there is a board on the market that will drive itself to a show, unload itself from the truck, set up and run the show for you, break everything down and repack the truck, and then drive itself back to the shop.

I think it even has a built in function to connect wirelessly to your bank and cash the checks for you.

Anyways that the impression I get from the posts.
 
Re: GLD80 Discussion

Jay Barracato said:
I have the feeling from some of the other posts that there is a board on the market that will drive itself to a show, unload itself from the truck, set up and run the show for you, break everything down and repack the truck, and then drive itself back to the shop.

I think it even has a built in function to connect wirelessly to your bank and cash the checks for you.

Anyways that the impression I get from the posts.
Click to expand...

Not sure what you mean, Jay. The iLive is my all-time favorite console.
 
Re: GLD80 Discussion

I have two GLD80s, two AR2412s and two AR84s. They are awesome. The best console under $18,000 in my opinion. They are so flexible in routing and it can be reconfigured in just a couple seconds. They sound terrific. Obviously they are trying to move some GLD80s before the GLD112s start to ship.

The IPad app is really good and just got an update today to make it a little better.

As far as drawbacks, there are few. Some people want de-essers on every channel, currently the De-sewer is an FX unit.

The touch screen is kind of funny if you have big fingers like mine.

The LED light that A&H sells is very expensive and the dimmer dial is easy to break.

The biggest drawback is only having 4 mic inputs on the surface, I would have loved to have had 6 or 8 there.

It is an awesome deal, I highly recommend one. Your LS9 will gather a lot of dust.
 
Re: GLD80 Discussion

Silas Pradetto said:
Not sure what you mean, Jay. The iLive is my all-time favorite console.
Click to expand...

I was referring to the board that has dominated every thread about consoles for the last year. So I guess I have interjected it into this thread as well.

There have been few new boards that impressed me as much with just their feel as the GLD. I can't say I have any negative feelings about the iLive, except I haven't wandered really far from default setups the few times I have been provided one. The problem, as I see it, is all these newer boards do the standard things fine, it is not until you get into the more subtle setup and mix techniques that the differences start to stand out.

When everyone was ranting and raving about the Presonus when it first came out, I was a holdout. It took about 50 shows for me to shift to being perfectly accepting of what that board can and cannot do. I will probably have a different view of the current crop of boards after 50 or shows on each.

For Rob,
I don't have a complete answer but I would really look into the recording side. As far as plug and play control for the remote box and the control surface, once you get used to the thinner snake, you never notice any difference in its operation when it is set up.
 
Re: GLD80 Discussion

Jay Barracato said:
...The problem, as I see it, is all these newer boards do the standard things fine, it is not until you get into the more subtle setup and mix techniques that the differences start to stand out....
Click to expand...

This is the major differentiating factor between the 'big boy' consoles, IMO. They all do the basics, it's the UI and subtle stuff that makes it work for you or not work for you.
 
Re: GLD80 Discussion

Really happy with the GLD my church installed a year ago.

A couple of additional things missing compared to some competitors:
-there's sidechain EQ on dynamics but you can't route in a separate sidechain signal.
-no offline editor yet; it was announced at the same time as the GLD-112 but hasn't been released.
 
Re: GLD80 Discussion

Silas Pradetto said:
This is the major differentiating factor between the 'big boy' consoles, IMO. They all do the basics, it's the UI and subtle stuff that makes it work for you or not work for you.
Click to expand...

And I guess what makes me an outsider to these conversations is that I use what I am provided and I adjust my mix style to the features a product does well, rather than looking at a marketing feature list, or saying some product is "wrong" because it doesn't include something another product does. I dont think the longest feature list is always the best.

I used to be a carpenter. I had an affinity for Milwaukee tools. That doesn't mean I couldn't cut a straight line with a Porter Cable, a Dewalt, or a Makita.

Once upon a time, there was a proud house tech with a GL2400, who had the groups not the auxes routed back to stage. It took me halfway into the first set to figure out why my monitor mixes were randomly changing. The more patching options a system has, the more likely someone is going to patch in a way that no one understands; and therefore, screw up everyone else that steps up to that console.
 
Re: GLD80 Discussion

Jay Barracato said:
And I guess what makes me an outsider to these conversations is that I use what I am provided and I adjust my mix style to the features a product does well, rather than looking at a marketing feature list, or saying some product is "wrong" because it doesn't include something another product does. I dont think the longest feature list is always the best.

I used to be a carpenter. I had an affinity for Milwaukee tools. That doesn't mean I couldn't cut a straight line with a Porter Cable, a Dewalt, or a Makita.

Once upon a time, there was a proud house tech with a GL2400, who had the groups not the auxes routed back to stage. It took me halfway into the first set to figure out why my monitor mixes were randomly changing. The more patching options a system has, the more likely someone is going to patch in a way that no one understands; and therefore, screw up everyone else that steps up to that console.
Click to expand...

I just had this experience with DiGiCo. The console does just about everything a console could do, except the two things I wanted it to do, and it takes an hour and 30 touchscreen presses to get anything done. Not the console for me, but it's wonderful to some.

I regularly mix on a DM1000. Extremely basic functionality for live sound, but it does a fine job.
 
Re: GLD80 Discussion

Jay Barracato said:
The problem, as I see it, is all these newer boards do the standard things fine, it is not until you get into the more subtle setup and mix techniques that the differences start to stand out.
Click to expand...

FWIW for mixing to FX sends I like how it can do "reverse sends-on-faders" . You don't have to go to the FX mix and turn up inputs, you can go to the input and turn it up in the FX mixes.

Of course, there's another console that can do that too... :lol:

Chris
 
Re: GLD80 Discussion

Rob Spence said:
I got a notice from A&H about a great deal on the GLD80. Buy it and get a free 24x12 remote stage box.

So, I am finally tempted.

I have an LS-32 and use Dante for recording and Stage Mix with the iPad. Both features are important to me. I do not need to meet riders. I would like the digital snake but have been reluctant to spend on RIO boxes.

For those who own or use a GLD, what are the drawbacks as you see them?

I am guessing that they are using the sale to reduce inventory in advance of some new announcement this fall. Anyone heard any rumors?

Thanks
Sent from my iPad HD
Click to expand...

In simple terms the best cheap board you can buy is the Behringer X32. If you want something a little better with a digital core and some more channels it’s the GLD. I don’t think anything else comes close to either of these at this price point.

Everyone I have spoken to that owns a GLD just L O V E S it.
 
Jay Barracato said:
For Rob,
I don't have a complete answer but I would really look into the recording side. As far as plug and play control for the remote box and the control surface, once you get used to the thinner snake, you never notice any difference in its operation when it is set up.
Click to expand...

I expect I would get the Dante card for it and keep the rest of the recording setup.
At least there isn't a 16ch limit per slot.

With the limits on sidechain inputs, how do you do ducking?


Sent from my iPad HD
 
Re: GLD80 Discussion

Rob Spence said:
With the limits on sidechain inputs, how do you do ducking?
Click to expand...

You don't, not for now anyway. If this is particularly important to you it'll probably be a stumbling block for the GLD.

The iLive has this, as well as dynamic EQ and multiband compression. It's probably one of the features they're using to differentiate the product lines and avoid drawing sales away from one of their own products.

Chris
 
Last edited:
Re: GLD80 Discussion

Jay Barracato said:
.Once upon a time, there was a proud house tech with a GL2400, who had the groups not the auxes routed back to stage. It took me halfway into the first set to figure out why my monitor mixes were randomly changing. The more patching options a system has, the more likely someone is going to patch in a way that no one understands; and therefore, screw up everyone else that steps up to that console.
Click to expand...

He was likely running it in aux/group flip mode, where the faders are the aux masters and the XLR outs are the auxes (instead of the usual knobs and 1/4" outs). I prefer the standard setup even if mixing monitors only.
 
Re: GLD80 Discussion

Tim Padrick said:
He was likely running it in aux/group flip mode, where the faders are the aux masters and the XLR outs are the auxes (instead of the usual knobs and 1/4" outs). I prefer the standard setup even if mixing monitors only.
Click to expand...

Nope, he had it wired to run that way but hadn't engaged the switch on the surface. All i knew when we were patching was that he had xlr returns at the stage. i guess i thought he had an adapter cable from the 1/4 to the snake xlr when we setup. So some of the band members were getting just the instrument mics and others just the vocal mics. Because it was bluegrass, there was enough bleed that they couldn't tell me what was wrong other than they didn't like their mixes. Because I was afl-ing the auxes I couldn't hear anything wrong with their mixes. I didn't figure it out until I physically moved the entire desk to see how it was patched at that end.

To avoid further hijacking of Robs thread, I can't say I am a big user of side chains so the lack has not been a problem. On the couple shows I helped with setup, once the stage box was plugged and on, I did not notice any differences between that setup and having the pre's at FOH and a traditional snake, operationally. Occassionally I need to duck either the kick or the bass on stages that have excessive low end buildup, but because that show is all of 4 inputs, I usually just apply a two knuckle ducker.

i will say that the GLD/iLive effects are some of the ones I have liked the best out of the box without extensive tweaking of the parameters.
 
Re: GLD80 Discussion

Helge Dr. Bentsen said:
I've seen a couple of GLD80 die this summer, fortunately they we're able to bring in a replacement console.

Don't know if this is typical or two random failures.
Click to expand...

Random failures. There have been a few people on the GLD forums with recurring failures, even on the replacement consoles. No one can have as bad luck as them. They are doing something wrong or possibly using a bad piece of hardware. Who knows what they are doing??? It also seems that most of the failures have been in the euro zone. Makes me think maybe a voltage problem but I don't know if anyone has looked into that.

There have been a few firmware issues arise. A&H has been good to fix those fairly quickly.
 
Re: GLD80 Discussion

RYAN LOUDMUSIC JENKINS said:
Random failures. There have been a few people on the GLD forums with recurring failures, even on the replacement consoles. No one can have as bad luck as them. They are doing something wrong or possibly using a bad piece of hardware. Who knows what they are doing??? It also seems that most of the failures have been in the euro zone. Makes me think maybe a voltage problem but I don't know if anyone has looked into that.
Click to expand...

Specifically Norway, where Helge lives... 8O~8-O~:shock:

Helge, do you know a guy from Eggkleiva in Norway called Willy Berg? He has repeated issues with his GLD's (his original one and the one it was replaced with.) but most other people are completely fine.

Chris
 
Top Bottom