Mixers/Consoles - 5.1 Surround mixer recommendations?

[soundlight]

I agree with the computer playback solution - this is how you should handle playback. Qlab is great, and I use it with the Audiofire 12, which has it's own amazing software program that comes with it for internal routing of the inputs if you want automated line input routing changes during the show for some strange reason.

However, if you have the money, the 01V96 is the perfect console for a blackbox. You can set up basic presets for shows and recall them instantly, it's got a good variety of outputs for recording shows (use the console's preamps for some house mics, send the output to video recording or live feed, you never know what applications are going to come up).

[museav]

Maybe I missed something, but it seems like we don't really know much about what they need. We don't know what groups use the system, the types/level of productions, the abilities of the operators or the budget. we don't know how many or what type of inputs are involved, what type of processing may be desired, what the surround sound capability is or how they plan to use it, etc. I think that maybe we need to know more about the situation in order to have a good basis for any suggestions.

[Eboy87]

Originally Posted by DaveySimps

Certainly there are many pros and cons for either system. I am just trying to give additional info for the Op, not start a debate.

~Dave

Agreed. My apologies, I didn't intend to start a debate; just tossing around ideas to consider. I missed the caveat at the end of your post about the mics, my mistake. But we are in agreement essentially. I use Qlab all the time now and hate going back to CD and MiniDisk.

[jkowtko]

Here's an answer that I hope covers all the major cases ...

* If you do not have access to each of the 6 speakers individually and only have the ability to access two inputs to a surround-sound processor (like your home surround system), then any board will do, since they all have LR outputs, and that's pretty much all you can feed into it.

* If you DO have direct access to each to the six speakers individually, then --

- If you need "surround panning", then one of the digital boards mentioned above is probably your best bet. (the 01v96 is a favorite and is quite powerful)

- If you don't need surround panning but just need the ability to playback a 5.1 audio file and/or DVD, then any sound board with 6 bus outs should do. In this case you'll need an input device such as a DVD player or sound interface with SCS/Q-Lab/etc, and channel each of the 6 outputs from your device to six discrete inputs on the board, an the each of the inputs to it's own dedicated output. I did this for a long time on a Mackie CFX20, using the individual group outs and two auxes as my six outputs. So you will likely need a board that has 4 groups, giving you at least six buses total to work with. And you can continue to mix in other stereo and mono input sources as well.

* If you have 5.1 surround files to use as input to the system, then you will need the 6 bus board, surround panning or not.

* However, if you only have stereo input files and want to produce surround sound, then I don't think any sound board will do the processing -- you'll have to get a separate processing unit (like a home surround receiver system, or the professional equivalent) or convert the files first using separate software.
- If you are starting with stereo files and would like to convert them to 5.1, there are some programs out there that will do it for you.

I personally have used the V.1 Stereo to Surround converter plug-in (http://www.stevethomson.ca/vi/) with very good success, and in the small theater I am affiliated with, it does sound pretty good throughout the audience seating