If you buy a
digital mixer, it is important that the teacher be willing to make the effort to learn how to work the board so they can teach the students. Most of he 11 high schools around me bought
Yamaha LS-9 boards several years ago, one has an older Presonis (sp?), one has a Soundcraft digital board. The five junior college theaters close by all have
Yamaha M7-CL48s. Of these 16 schools, there is only one teacher at one school who knows enough about the board to teach anyone, and he just barely knows enough to get sound to come out. In a few cases where the teacher was not interested in learning the board, a specific student had enough interest to learn the board, but the student graduated a year or two later and the school was left with no one. It is a shame to see how much effort the students put in learning a show, only to have awful sound.
So, unless you have the right teacher, I highly recommend an analog board such as a
Allen and Heath GL2400.
If you get to a
point with a theatrical production where you have a lot of wireless mics (more than 5-10), and you have a lot of sound cues, you have to use a digital board to pre-program the cues.
The least expensive decent board is the Berringer X-32. I normally do not recommend it for schools because Berringer has added so many features to the board, it has become one of the more difficult boards to learn. If you have a few thousand dollars, I would recommend any of the
Yamaha boards, and yes even including the TF-5. The TF series boards have every feature you need for basic theater, and are intentionally kept simple so they are easier to learn. If you have more money, then look at the
Yamaha CL series. I would add the comment that the older
Yamaha M7-CL48 has been the "go-to" board at many theaters. The big reason is, it has all 48 channels on the board - no layers to
page through when you are trying to
track down a mis-behaving mic.
I think the problem was not exactly that the teachers 'didn't know
digital mixer XYZ' so much as the teachers really weren't sound designers and technicians. The one that had audio leanings was also teaching everything else, too, and really couldn't devote new, additional time to production instruction. My observation is that motivated students teach themselves, under guidance. Unmotivated students must be instructed. In everything. That's a full plate. {quick story} I bought a
Yamaha O1v on eBay. $400. It was my first
digital mixer for this old analog guy and I considered the money to be tuition at the Skool of Digital. Once I figured out and understood the difference between 0 dBVu and 0 DBFS, it was just a matter of poking around on it, using
RTFM, and I determined these devices were not an evil
plot from a foreign
power to corrupt our audio innocence, indeed these devices were our friends. In these small boxes were a big-ass box of tools, in qualities that Analogue Guy could only dream of. Parametric EQ? Yes. Compressors? Everywhere (metaphorically). FX? Built in. But I was already a sound guy and kind of knew what tools were useful to me, had some idea of how to use them, and could deliver an audibly better product because of them.
The GL2400 was a nice little analogue
desk in its day, lots of clubs, civic halls and houses of worship had them. I like straight forward analoge mixers to teach signal flow,
gain staging and trouble shooting. I don't like mixing musical
theatre on them and I think some scripts/scores would almost impossible for one individual to operate.
The X32/M32 is a feature-rich ecosystem and yes, one can configure a *32 in such ways that it not pass audio. Out of the box, it works if you follow the quick start guide. Adventure off the beaten path and use bread crumbs... well, it didn't work out too well for Hansel and Grettle, either.
Seriously, the same configureability sophistication is what makes it great for musical theater - the pit on their own "kind of like Aviom" mixers, for example. They can be controlled by Chris Hubbard's Palladium. And they're everywhere, like the
Mackie 1604 in a previous century. Finding people that have already seen, touched, used and possibly cursed and/or praised these mixers shouldn't be too difficult. Uli has sold 7 million, world wide...
That said, there are mixers that are easier to use and have their own growth/expansion capabilities, like Soundcraft, whose main liability is being Soundcraft. I've never mixed a muscial on one, though. My experience has been music concert or small corporate talking heads and for the most part found the Si to be friendly, if unsophisticated.
For a tight budget for a "real"
console, a
Yamaha CL series surface with Tio boxes can pack a lot of value into a
mixer, and
Yamaha is about as ubiquitous a brand as you'll find in most civic centers, PACS, and AV shops. Disney just bought a number of the new big dog PM10 Rivage desks, so there's some brand "halo" now... but "
Yamaha is everbody's *second* choice" says a lot, too.