Behringer X32 DCA to MIX BUS

[paulears]

I love the continual assumptions that cheap = poorer. (NOT)

 

Sure - equipment built to lower price points may well have limitations, but it simply is not universal, and in so many cases, when equipment is tested and reviewed by knowledgeable people, the differences are often small, or sometimes not even evident.

 

The difference in tone between expensive, stadium suitable equipment is very evident when you listen. They sound good, but different, and I'm simply uncertain now if patching a mega expensive processor into one channel rather than a Behringer (for example) can really be heard and then considered good or bad. I'm happy that in the studio or lab these differences can be heard by some, but not all, and in the lab the results can be measured, but we're in an industry where we're told that some kits is good and some is not - and people believe it. When the X32 was announced, the purists poured cold water on it. Behringer proved them wrong, put in place an enviable dealer support network, and now many hire firms are buying them in multiples because they do what they say they do.

if you can only afford an X32 you are not going to be using a load of expensive outboard gear.

This is rather patronising, if the meaning is "only" and seems quite wrong when some of the hire companies have outboard in stock that costs more than the X32.

 

The speed with which everyone now seems to have a budget, but excellent digital desk shows that quality and price are no longer enemies. To try to keep up the pretence that you really need to spend huge amounts of money to achieve good quality sound is wearing a bit thin.

 

I understand where Tim is coming from, but the "I look down on him" attitude really needs an update.

 

I wonder if the artiste would actually hear the sonic differences the esoteric bit of kit exhibits over a budget product? I think it's nothing to do with sound any longer, but to do with status? If you are big enough to demand product A over product B, then that's great - but remember our rider topic where the actual performers never even see these riders before they go out. I remember a performer praising the sound of the system without realising the posh expensive side fills by mistake were not connected, and the Thomann plastic boxes next to them had been what he'd been hearing.

 

I'm positive that in most live situations the tonal balance and small s/n differences are just not audible in the overall scheme of things. If it hisses badly, somebody will notice - if processing is 16 bit 44.1K or 32 bit 96K, it is invisible magic, that only gets noticed by people who read labels.

 

I'm not saying cheap is as good, but I'm saying that sometimes cheap is perfectly good enough, and then spend the budget elsewhere!

[timsabre]

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to be patronising, I use an X32 all the time at my church and it's an amazing desk. Better than a Yamaha LS9 in my opinion (we had the choice of either, and opted for the X32). I'm really a lampy not a sound engineer but I work with a few professional sound engineers and they all look down on the X32 (though most have not used it) and would always pick something more upmarket if budget permitted. I just can't imagine someone speccing an X32 over a Yamaha (or whatever) to release budget for better outboard insert gear specifically. To save budget for extra radio mics, better PA, well I would gladly use an X32, but many pro engineers would not even consider it. Maybe this will change with time as reliability is proven.

[top-cat]

I think one common reason people will use analogue gear with their digital mixers is that a lot of venues / theatres will be buying their X32 to directly replace an analogue desk. So their outboard rack - with effects units that they've become very familiar with over the years, will still be there. And there is nothing wrong with particularly liking the sound of one piece of kit, and wanting to use it in your new setup.

 

I think frankly, in the bigger picture, the days of judging a product's quality by it's price point are more numbered than ever.

[paulears]

We have an X32, and have not received any negative comment at all, indeed - many of the ops who use big ticket kits every day report they have bought one for themselves. We had an PMD5 at the grand prix, and the UK sound op working in the UAE had bought one. Things are a-changing! Rather like what happened when Skoda went from a joke to something sought after!

[Shez]

To be fair, I think you can select a mix bus as the source of a channel, from where you could then send it to an aux. Saves messing about with patch leads and the resulting latency of extra conversions.

 

Is there much latency when doing this? There shouldn't be - as it would affect the use of analogue outboard too.

If the rhythm section are on IEMs, it never hurts to avoid adding unnecessary latency.

And unnecessary DA and AD conversions. And faffing about with matching levels. Much easier to just do the routing in the box.

 

(When I'm using piano sample libraries, more than a few ms of latency completely throws me. I can't *hear* any delay but the *feel* is just wrong.)

[S&L]

We have an X32, and have not received any negative comment at all, indeed - many of the ops who use big ticket kits every day report they have bought one for themselves. We had an PMD5 at the grand prix, and the UK sound op working in the UAE had bought one. Things are a-changing! Rather like what happened when Skoda went from a joke to something sought after!

 

To be honest the argument is over - I have a list of 2 hire companies that I use that do not stock an x32 - and I have a list of 3 that do and I have managed to stick with the one preferred company - just!

I stuck up a relationship with them earlier this year specifically to hire an x32, liked them and have been back several times since. but the last time I hired we both had to compromise because their hire out, their own jobs and my jobs clashed dates - not enough desks available to do the jobs.

a few weeks ago I got an email from them...

'did you buy that x32 you were talking about purchasing?'

No, still not enough cash in the coffers, I will be back to hire again shortly.

'oh well, too many jobs on for them at the moment we were hoping to hire yours - never mind we will probably buy yet another one'.

 

Now this company is using the desks amongst other things for TV broadcasts and DVD's that will be in your Christmas stocking this year.

you got to ask yourself, if one in four hire companies are using them, if they are being used on top flight projects and someone is turning their nose up at them...exactly how far behind the pack have they strayed?

they aren't the holy grail or anything but they are turning up all over the place at this point.

the industry is has a lot of 'well that's the way we did it in 1979 and I'm not changing the mics I use or the desk I use now' and a fair amount of 'I couldn't possibly drive anything less than a Mercedes (insert hugely expensive mixing console and esoteric outboard in lieu of mercedes)

' - there is only me, the bat people and a Tibetan goat herder that can tell the difference but I'm a pro.'

I'm definitely not throwing stones at anyone on blue room (lovely folk) - but I mention the above stereotypes by way of illustrating that there will always be a rump of engineers who for one reason or another don't embrace the onslaught of reasonably priced high tech gear that is coming our way

[OneEng]

If you have for example all drums on DCA 1 and then the bass player wants a bit of ALL drums in his monitor, is there anyway to send a dca mix to a mix bus to bring up everything on that DCA through a particular monitor, rather than a sends on fader mix to each bus?

 

Ta,

 

UKD.

As others have said, DCA's are "Digitally Controlled Amplifiers", not subgroup buses.

 

What you are trying to do is quite easy.

 

The easiest way is as follows:

 

Use the sends on each drum input and the bass input to make a mix on one of the mix buses. You now have a monitor mix containing your drums and bass (and anything else you want to put on it.

 

Next, go to the routing page. Select either the "Analog out" page (if you want to use an XLR), or the Aux out (if you want to use a 1/4" out). Plug your powered speaker or your power amp into the output you selected and you are done. Adjust the sends by using the "sends on fader" button and going through and selecting each channel you have sent to this buss to get the mix you want.

 

Perhaps a little better way (albeit a little more complicated) is to use two mix busses assigned as subgroups (one for drums, the other for bass), and a matrix mix of these buses.

 

The advantage of this approach is that you can have a fader for the drum mix, and another fader for the bass level in the monitor mix.

 

To do this, you first have to configure the X32 to have a basic setup having subgroups (it has none by default). You do this by going to the config menu under "setup". On the right you will see "Buss Pre-configuration" Select one that has some subgroups and you are done. Please note that you lose your channel settings when you do this so you should have each channel saved as a preset to make it easier to get back later.

 

Next, Use your sends on the drum input channels to send to one of the subgroups making yourself a drum mix. Now do the same thing but just for the bass channel (into a different subgroup). Go to the "bus master" layer and select the drum bus. On the sends page for that channel, send the drums to a matrix mix. Do the same thing for the subgroup you are using for bass. Go to the routing page. Either use an Analog out, or an aux out and route the matrix mix channel to the output you want to use to drive your monitor.

 

Using this approach, you can easily raise or lower the entire drum mix separately from the bass into that monitor.

 

In both cases, you can use the buss channel eq to eliminate feedback and/or improve the sound quality of the monitor with eq. I would stay far away from compression on a wedge monitor. You are sure to get feedback if you try it. You may want to put a gate on it though. That way the monitor wont hiss when you aren't playing.

 

Hope this helps!

 

 

[fincaman]

The only hickup with top-cat's plan there is that you can't route a group to an Aux on an X32.

 

Josh

 

Are you sure ? if you go to routing/aux out you appear to be able to send any signal to any aux. You can send any channels you want to a bus control that bus with it's own slider then route it to an aux out. It seems simple so Have I missed something ?

 

 

 

 

 

[d_korman]

No, you've not missed anything, you can do exactly as you describe.

[smalljoshua]

You can indeed take a mix bus configured as a group and route it to an auxiliary output jack on the console.

 

What the OP is trying to do however is take a mix bus configured as a group and then route that to another mix bus configured as an aux. This is what I believe to be impossible without routing it back into a channel input. At the very least, it wasn't possible to do this on Saturday when I had one.

 

Josh

[fincaman]

You can indeed take a mix bus configured as a group and route it to an auxiliary output jack on the console.

 

What the OP is trying to do however is take a mix bus configured as a group and then route that to another mix bus configured as an aux. This is what I believe to be impossible without routing it back into a channel input. At the very least, it wasn't possible to do this on Saturday when I had one.

 

Josh

 

I haven't tried this but if you want to send an already configured aux bus or a mix of several buses somewhere you can send them to any of the 6 matrix buses which can than be sent to any of 14 outputs Is that what he wants to achieve ?

 

Don't forget you can download X32-Edit from Behringer so anyone can play with a virtual X32 on their computer, this also doubles as a tablet remote control

 

 

 

 

 

[timsabre]

OP is just confusing a dca "group" with a group on an analogue desk. He wanted a mix of all the channels controlled by one dca, and the way to do this is to send them to a mix bus. As far as I know you have to set this up manually. If you hold down the select button of the dca fader it will light up the channels which that dca is controlling.

[smalljoshua]

You can indeed take a mix bus configured as a group and route it to an auxiliary output jack on the console.

 

What the OP is trying to do however is take a mix bus configured as a group and then route that to another mix bus configured as an aux. This is what I believe to be impossible without routing it back into a channel input. At the very least, it wasn't possible to do this on Saturday when I had one.

 

Josh

 

I haven't tried this but if you want to send an already configured aux bus or a mix of several buses somewhere you can send them to any of the 6 matrix buses which can than be sent to any of 14 outputs Is that what he wants to achieve ?

 

Don't forget you can download X32-Edit from Behringer so anyone can play with a virtual X32 on their computer, this also doubles as a tablet remote control

That is indeed what I'm alluding to. However, the functionality as requested whereby it is possible to route both Group Mix buses and single channels to the same mix isn't achievable. It's a shame as Midas's Matrix Sends are able to have any channel directly routed to them. I suppose that Behringer had to cut feature creep early on though!

 

Josh

[fincaman]

You can indeed take a mix bus configured as a group and route it to an auxiliary output jack on the console.

 

What the OP is trying to do however is take a mix bus configured as a group and then route that to another mix bus configured as an aux. This is what I believe to be impossible without routing it back into a channel input. At the very least, it wasn't possible to do this on Saturday when I had one.

 

Josh

 

I haven't tried this but if you want to send an already configured aux bus or a mix of several buses somewhere you can send them to any of the 6 matrix buses which can than be sent to any of 14 outputs Is that what he wants to achieve ?

 

Don't forget you can download X32-Edit from Behringer so anyone can play with a virtual X32 on their computer, this also doubles as a tablet remote control

That is indeed what I'm alluding to. However, the functionality as requested whereby it is possible to route both Group Mix buses and single channels to the same mix isn't achievable. It's a shame as Midas's Matrix Sends are able to have any channel directly routed to them. I suppose that Behringer had to cut feature creep early on though!

 

Josh

 

Hello again, I am replying out of sheer interest not trying to score points as I have an X32 producer but if you wanted to add a single channel to a matrix couldn't you couldn't you send it to a bus and send the bus to the matrix or is this considered wasteful of buses, I have read the original post and it seems to fit the bill or am I still missing something ?

 

 

 

 

 

[david.elsbury]

Might be worth some people who are not familiar with the term, to look up. What a DCA actualy does?