Your console is on the short list of gear that’s essential to your mission. As the control center for your audio, it’s important to make a smart decision when it comes time to acquire or replace one. Here are some questions to help narrow your search.
What’s Your Budget?
Up front, your budget is almost certainly the most important consideration. Sort that out first. Don’t be afraid to ask for a little more money if it’s necessary. After researching the possibilities, if the console you need is 5% more than the budget, do whatever’s necessary to get that extra 5%. If you’re needing an additional 50-100% of the established budget, you probably need to re-think.
Inputs/Outputs
Determine how many total will be necessary, considering the maximum number of instruments, vocalists and other sources used during your services. Talk to everyone involved and think through every scenario. Then tack on an additional 50% to that maximum number. I’ve never heard anybody say, “Wow — I sure wish we had fewer inputs,” but the opposite is voiced every single day. A lack of inputs can be resolved via submixing and other techniques, but such work-arounds complicate things and can be avoided by planning ahead.
You’ll certainly need physical outputs to get signal to your loudspeakers, so assess how many speakers (or groups of speakers) you’ll need to feed. And consider that even if your console is digital, there’s a strong possibility that your outputs will be analog. Of course, they could be digital, or you may have both. Ensure your console will have the appropriate type(s) of outputs, and in a sufficient number. So how many destinations does your console need to feed, and what kind of outputs will be necessary?
Analog or Digital?
There are a couple of perspectives in deciding between analog and digital — price and the qualitative differences between the two. In the not so distant past, it was purely a matter of money. Digital consoles were expensive while analog ran the gamut in terms of price. These days, price has been all but eliminated as a factor, although note that the quality and feature-to-price ratio in digital consoles has skyrocketed in the past decade, making digital much more appealing.
Analog consoles are still worthy of consideration due to simplicity of operation and the increasingly miniscule difference in audio quality. Presently, it’s getting harder to claim that analog sounds better, particularly when we use algorithms that convincingly emulate traditional analog circuitry. Digital offers extensive recall capabilities and other advances that analog simply can’t match. Honestly, any analog console with a lot of inputs, buses and other complexities doesn’t have a significant advantage in terms of simplicity of operation. Digital is pretty hard to beat these days.
Built-In Effects
In the old days, “effects” meant an outboard reverb and maybe a delay. A sophisticated rig back then might have a few more processors, but now even inexpensive consoles frequently have as many as four simultaneous processors, with dozens of options: several varieties of reverbs, delays, modulation, tremelos and so on. Both analog and digital consoles have built-in effects, so digital’s typical advantage is lesser on this particular count, although digital mixers typically offer a broader array of effects, usually of higher quality.
Musicians Mixing Monitors?
Musicians with good monitor mixes perform better, and when they can mix their own monitors, they usually get it exactly right. In the case of analog consoles, it’s necessary to provide a bus with all the signals that musicians need to hear, but additional hardware is necessary, including physical mix control units on the platform with the musicians. Numerous digital consoles make it a bit easier, however, by simply allowing musicians to log in via Wi-Fi and take control of their own bus with a mobile device, sometimes without any additional hardware other than in-ear monitor transmitters. Digital consoles that facilitate this mechanism are very appealing.
Pro Or Volunteer Crew
Professional engineers should, in theory, be able to work on any console you throw at them. Volunteers, on the other hand, may have some struggles with consoles of increased complexity. Obviously, you’ll need a console of sufficient sophistication to accomplish all you need for your services, but if your mixers are untrained volunteers, you need to keep it simple enough for them to comprehend.
Does It Need To Be Portable?
There are scenarios where a church may not have the budget to acquire multiple consoles for use in multiple locations. A potential solution might be to acquire a single console that can be moved when necessary. Large-frame mixers may be problematic in this case, while small portable consoles may not provide enough I/O or other features. Another issue is ensuring that all connections are correctly made when the console arrives at each location, which can be a challenge. Here, it’s probably preferable to acquire two consoles that are capable of accomplishing the tasks at hand, rather than one portable one.
Networking
The big question here is whether your console needs to integrate into a digital audio network. As audio networking solutions become cheaper and more common, this is a more important consideration. Making the connection to particular types of networks can be a challenge with certain consoles. If you need to connect to a network, ensure that your choice of console has the capacity to do so.
Which Way to Go?
A console can be a major financial outlay, so consider all the important factors to make the right choice. Examine the facts in the most objective way possible — use lists of pros and cons and avoid decisions based on subjective attributes. Decisions made emotionally and not logically are seldom successful. Take time and good luck in your search.
John McJunkin is the chief engineer and staff producer in the studio at Grand Canyon University.
