X32 for High School Auditorium Intall?

Ben Lawrence

Ben Lawrence

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Mar 2, 2011
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Hey Guys,
Wondering if anyone has any thoughts, experience or opinions on this board installed in a High School Aud. Your standard multi use space. Board is operated by the students most of the time. Just looking for ease of use and ability to recall a couple standard presets. We are currently running a older analog peavey 24chn board which is starting to show signs of failure.
 
Re: X32 for High School Auditorium Intall?

As a "general rule" (I don't always obey it myself)-I think it best not to use a digital console in a room like a school auditorium.

The problem is unless they have a full time operator (most don't), then training is an issue and if you don't "know" the console-it makes it hard for a lay person to even figure it out.

If you can't operate an analog console-you don't need to be behind it.

I like to think "simple" in these types of situations.

Generally with an analog console if you have a failure (except the power supply) there are all sorts of "work arounds".

With a digital console that is locked up or whatever-there is nothing you can do to "get-r-done".

Digital is great-as long as it is working. But most failures you hear about render the console useless. Not so with analog.

Just like a digital snake. With analog you can break all kinds of wires in different places and most of it will still work.

With digital-you are pretty much shot. Unless you have redundant stage boxes and cabling. Many systems have redundant cabling paths-but what happens if the main clock goes down in the stage box-it ALL stops working. Just as an example.
 
Re: X32 for High School Auditorium Intall?

Like most things I think it depends on the culture of the place. You may be ok having a digital console with the current crop of students now but what about 3-5 years time - anything in place to train the new guys coming in ?

I find it rather amusing that right now i'm training some high schoolers and a few teachers on how to run a PA system with their gear and it includes an X32.. and a 13yo kid knows more about the console than I do. That said, I know how to *use* it more than he does - I just don't know all the menu's and how to get to the finicky bits but having manual in pdf with search works a treat.

Anyway.. back to your question; It's one piece of the puzzle. Ivan has pointed out a number of analogue work-arounds but most of those wouldn't occur to an average HS kid. I'd put one in. For the feature set it's gotta be the best value at the moment.
 
Re: X32 for High School Auditorium Intall?

I think you might be surprised how well many students adapt to digital consoles. They have grown up with computers and computer audio editing while they often don't have that much experience with analog consoles and thus are not as tied to an analog console interface.

I probably get more push back against analog mixers on a forum focused on high school and college theater students than I do elsewhere and the X32 has been a topic of much discussion there. In fact when I suggested a StudioLive over a X32 for a particular situation I got all sorts of arguments from multiple parties, some of them related to the analog style interface not being a factor or even a negative for most students.

And while I agree with Ivan regarding 'work arounds' but I also agree with Andrew that many/most of the students aren't at a point where they have the knowledge and understanding of audio to take advantage of those options.

On the other hand, I still like to see students learn how to use an analog console before working on a digital console, I believe that helps gain a better understanding of some of the basics and better prepares them for being able to work in a multitude of situations.
 
Re: X32 for High School Auditorium Intall?

Brad Weber said:
I think you might be surprised how well many students adapt to digital consoles. They have grown up with computers and computer audio editing while they often don't have that much experience with analog consoles and thus are not as tied to an analog console interface.
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I'm not so much concerned about digital consoles and riding the faders and eq for a noob. But when you press that wrong button (and it will happen!) and you have no idea why the sound suddenly stopped then you are in big trouble.
 
Re: X32 for High School Auditorium Intall?

Robert Lofgren said:
I'm not so much concerned about digital consoles and riding the faders and eq for a noob. But when you press that wrong button (and it will happen!) and you have no idea why the sound suddenly stopped then you are in big trouble.
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I don't disagree but there is always something one can mess up.

One of the debates I always have is whether in a school setting the primarily factor should be the production aspect or the education aspect. Of course you want the best production value you can offer but it seems as though in some schools the focus is on the quality of the productions rather than on the students learning. This is an educational rather than professional application and if students are going to make mistakes and learn from them then is school not the place for that to occur?
 
Re: X32 for High School Auditorium Intall?

Brad Weber said:
I don't disagree but there is always something one can mess up.
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This is an educational rather than professional application and if students are going to make mistakes and learn from them then is school not the place for that to occur?
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Yes and no,

The other day I was asked to do sound on a ls9-16 in some school auditorium (fixed installation). The console was quite locked down and I was not allowed to reprogram the udk's.

Suddenly in the middle of the show all sound stops and nothing was where as I had it setup and realized quickly that the scene had changed - But how?

The talkback mic had slipped and touched one of the preprogrammed udk's that led to a mute scene!

If this happens to a noob during a real show chances are that this will not be resolved quickly (if ever?) without a knowledgable person to assist.

On some other occation during a show my tt24 console went dark and rebooted. I was 'upset' but the boot time is small so I wasn't too worried. When the console came back there was no sound so I quickly reached for my latest scene snapshot - Nothing!

I quickly realized that the console had performed some kind of factory reset and everything was gone!

It took me 15 minutes to setup the console again with all routing, eq, compressor, fx etc and everything back to a normal show.

Thankfully the band was very professional and I was able to setup some sound after five minutes of downtime so that the band could do some 'unplugged' stuff and five minutes later I had the monitors and decent sound in the foh and then another five minutes of final tuning. So for the audience the band was 'only' gone for five minutes.

With a presonus studiolive it is more or less wusiwug like some analog console and it's difficult to get lost by misstake.

But I see what you are getting at. It is good to learn by trial and error but there are time and places where this is a big no-no.
 
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