The_Guest said:
Yes, it's very common to see slaving features on the fancy large scale Cadacs, PM1D, and Digicos alike. But when your dealing with a medium scale
console (
Disclaimer: Nor the
Yamaha PM or the Verona I would consider crap, medium, and such. They're prices aren't as outrageous, therefore declaring in medium) mentioned here, depending on how sophisticated the design is, it's best to look into outboard gear. Esepecially considering these consoles don't offer any master/slave/secondary
console features.
The PM3500 is fully capable of being a master or a slave to another PM series
desk. You can control all functionality from the master
console (
VCA's,
cue functions, mix busses,
etc).
As far as the Verona, and most other consoles are concerned, you can patch the master outputs from the "slave"
console to the corresponding SUB IN on the "master"
console. If you are concerned about having two sets of master faders (one set controlling the "slave", and another controlling both the "master" and the "slave") you can patch out of the "slave" consoles insert
send. So the patch would be, for example,
"Slave" AUX 1 insert
send --> "Master" AUX 1 SUB IN.
Repeat for all remaining busses, and voila two consoles with one set of master faders. Although I am not sure if you can link the
mute groups and
cue buss.
For the record, the difference between a submixer an a sidecar is that a sidecar has no master section (specifically, no master faders). It is just a bunch of input channels to expand the input capability of the main
console. A submixer is just that, a separate
mixer that is used to reduce the number of channels required of the main
console.
For example if you have a 40
channel main
console, 16 channels of RF, 16 Channels of playback, 6 channels of time-based FX for the vocalists and another 24 inputs from the pit. You could submix all of the
orchestra on a 32
channel console (including whatever time-based FX you are using on them) and
send it to two inputs of your main
console. So in
effect you are actually SUB-grouping the
orchestra using a second
console instead of the subgroups on your main
console.
Hope that clarifies things,
James