Mixer thoughts and recomendations.

[gabe]

So the equipment in my school's new theatre is, in short, some taboo that I know someone knows and everyone I talk to doesn't know and wont tell me who does know. But our jazz choir is thinking about upgrading from a 16 channel mackie to a 24 channel board. I have only ever mixed on mackie boards and was looking at the 24.4 but thats a little on the high side for our budget. Does anybody have any recomendations for a 24 channel board maybey with less features ie. don't really need the two matrices and the built in compressor on every channel but the 6 aux sends are nice.

Thanks,

[mbandgeek]

Originally Posted by gabe

So the equipment in my school's new theatre is, in short, some taboo that I know someone knows and everyone I talk to doesn't know and wont tell me who does know. But our jazz choir is thinking about upgrading from a 16 channel mackie to a 24 channel board. I have only ever mixed on mackie boards and was looking at the 24.4 but thats a little on the high side for our budget. Does anybody have any recomendations for a 24 channel board maybey with less features ie. don't really need the two matrices and the built in compressor on every channel but the 6 aux sends are nice.

Thanks,

Mackie makes some good boards.

You can also check yamaha, or soundcraft. Both yamaha and soundcraft are some big names in mixing consoles. My school has an old yahama it still sounds good after 13 years.

[jbeutt]

I don't know what you're talking about with the comp on each channel. There isn't one on the 24.4.

There isn't a 24 channel mixer cheaper than a Mackie I'd reccommend to you. The only choicea below it are a behringer or a very used board and neither is a good investment. I recommend you guys work to get the money for this purchase and get yourselves a decent sound board. There are many options from grants to fundraisers to corporate sponsers. Attaining outside resouces is pretty easy for a school, you just have to go to the trouble of doing it. While your at it, look for money to replace other equipment. I assume (very prematurely) that if you're using a mackie and considering downgrading that the rest of your equipment isn't exactly top notch. The mixer is only a link in a chain and the weakest link...yada yada yada. If you're going to look for the money, look at upgrading everything.

Now considering you get the money, what is the setup you're using? i.e. Number of mics, monitors, recording setup, etc. Need to know all the specifics to help you pick a suitable board.

[soundlight]

I agree with everything said in the previous post. You need to fundraise to get your new board, and anything cheaper than a mackie ain't going to cut it. If I was going for a budget 24ch board, I'd got for the new Mackie Onyx 24.4 board. It's got the Onyx preamps, and it's at a pretty decent price for a 24-ch mixer. But if you're going Mackie, keep in mind how they treat stereo channels when you count the boards for mic channels...My other very high reccomendation would be a Souncraft GB2, which will serve you very well if you end up with it. Soundcraft is a very reputable and high-quality company. So, help the department raise some more money and also tell us about the rest of your setup.

[gabe]

Right now we have our 16 channel mackie, some nice QSC amps, a snake, and more mics than channels. Usually this setup is for about 20 choir members and we just have several singers share so that we can mic the band unless we are in a venue with a board that has more channels. We also just bought a DP-01 HD recorder. Now, a bigger board would be nice but it might just add more stress into mixing. I was also thinking about some cardioid condenser mics to pickup the whole sound and just hook them straight into the recorder.

[jbeutt]

well first off, setting up a TRUE stereo mic config and running it into your recorder will be much more trouble free, but to be effective it really has to be set up properly, with decent microphones and of course thoughtful placement.

Simply having more mics than channels is completely the wrong reason to get a larger board and I pray you aren't just hooking everything you've got up because it's there. If this is actually a choir that stands in a group, you shouldn't need more than 5 mics on them. More and more mics can be really detrimental. Give more detail. What does the band consist of (how many channels do they take up) and how specifically are you micing your choir and how are they organized on stage?

More more detail! It's amazing how the apparently small stuff affects advice.

[soundlight]

Also, what mics are you using for each part of this setup? This can be important in deciding if you should go for new mics.

[gabe]

OK, this setup is used for about three different choir groups. Jazz A and B choir are each about 20 poeple with the altos, tenors, and soprano's standing in a arch and the bases on a riser right behind the tenors. There is also a concert choir of about 30 people on risers that just use mics for solo's. Offhand I can't remember exactly what mics we are using, but to pickup the concert choir for the recording mix I used the same mics they are holding. The band usually consists of a drummer, who is lound enough and gets picked up in every mic on the stage, piano, bass, and guitar. We also have four monitors we put them on two aux sends and daisy chain the ones for the band together and the ones for the choir together.

[Andy_Leviss]

Honestly, your solution isn't a bigger, better console, it's fewer mics. You're over-mic'ing for a choir. Choirs as a rule almost never use individual mics, or even close to it. More typically, a handful of good, matching condensers are used to pick up the entire choir. Depending on the size and arrangement, a single stereo pair is often enough, plus a few mics for soloists--either handheld ones, or ones downstage of the risers that the soloists step up to.

This allows the choir to mix themselves, which is a key to a good choir sound. The key to reinforcing or recording a choir is to think of the choir as a single voice created out of the blend of all the voices in it, and not a collection of 20-30 individual voices.

In a very large or spread out group, it may be necessary to use more than two mics, but it'd be rare to need more than four or so, and with the sizes you're talking about, I can't see a need for more than two, or at most three, plus solos.

The only time I've ever used individual vocal mics in a choir-like setting is for contemporary a cappella groups, and even then, the main sound when recording them is from a stereo pair, with individual close mics for the bass and vp, and sometimes (but again, not as a rule) for the lead. In concert where a stereo pair for the group isn't a reasonable option for staging reasons, ie with a Rockappella/Ball-in-the-House style group, then you go to individual mics, but that's really a different beast, altogether, and the close-mic'd feel really is an integral part of that type of group's sound.

--A

The solution to your drum problem isn't necessarily to make the choir louder, it's to control the sound of the drums. A better investment of your money would be in drum baffles--these are the clear and fiber panels that you often see around the drummers in a rock band or in an orchestra pit. They can keep the sound of the drums from bleeding into the vocal mics and keep the other onstage sounds from bleeding into the sensitive overhead mics.

Remember that there are always multiple solutions to any problem, and throwing money and more electronics at the problem isn't always the best one.

[Peter]

Another option for controling may be adding some compressors to your mic inputs or outputs. This will possibly allow you to stop loud drum hits from being amplified through your speakers.