SMALL-FORMAT All Things EQual?
As small-footprint digital consoles continue to evolve, what's changing under the hood in terms of EQ and dynamics? Paul Watson finds out what users can expect as standard from some of the industry's leading manufacturers...
DiGiCo’s smallest live console, the SD11
DIGICO
DiGiCo’s smallest live console offering is the SD11, a 19-inch rack mount or tabletop mixer which packs plenty of punch thanks to a combination of Stealth Digital Processing and floating point Super FPGA technology. In addition to standard channel processing, which includes channel delay, single and multi-channel presets, dual insert points, hi- and lo-pass filters @ 24dB/octave, and a four-band parametric EQ with band curve selection, DiGiCo provides DYN 1 (compressor, de-esser, or assignable multi channel compressor) and DYN 2 (gate, compressor or ducker). Furthermore, the SD11 benefits from four dynamic EQ processors, which are all individually assignable to any input or output channel; these offer dynamic processing to each of the console’s four standard parametric bands, plus there are also four assignable multiband compressors.
The console also has 12 gangable 32-band graphic EQs, four stereo effects (from a palette of 33), and eight control groups (VCAs). In addition, there is an 8 x 8 output matrix, dual solo busses, and a master buss, so users essentially have 39 busses at their disposal.
SOUNDCRAFT
Being part of the Harman family, Soundcraft’s small-footprint offerings all benefit from Lexicon effects, BSS graphics, Studer signal processing, and dbx dynamic processing. The Si Expression is the manufacturer’s smallest digital console and comes in three guises: Si Expression 1, a 19-inch rack mount unit (16 faders); Si Expression 2 (24 faders); and Si Expression 3 (32 faders). The EQ and dynamics feature set is the same for all of the models: a four-band EQ offers low and hi shelf, two bands of parametric EQ with variable Q, and a range of 22Hz to 20KHz to complement the 31 BSS GEQ processors and hi-pass filters; GEQ LO selects the lower half of the EQ from 31Hz to 630Hz, and GEQ HI caters from 800Hz to 16kHz. There is a GEQ on every aux, matrix, and buss; and 20 aux busses, four FX busses, and eight matrix busses, for a grand total of 35 busses. The dynamics section has controls for the gate and compressor (on
every channel): the compressor controls are threshold, attack, release, make-up gain, and ratio; and gate controls are S/C HPF, S/C LPF, threshold, depth, attack, and release. There is a gate and compressor on every input, and a compressor on all of the output busses. In addition, four stereo Lexicon effects engines provide more than 20 preset effects. All effects returns are independent of the channel inputs and users are able to adjust all the parameters of the active FX patch. The dynamics section has controls for the gate and compressor (on
every channel): the compressor controls are threshold, attack, release, make-up gain, and ratio; and gate controls are S/C HPF, S/C LPF, threshold, depth, attack, and release. Gate and compressor are on every input, and it’s compressor only for all of the output busses.
Harman’s Soundcraft Si Performer
4 November 2013 The International Guide To Consoles 2013
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