Pick a medium sized rider-friendly digital desk?

Being in the EU I only know what I have seen around here:

A&H SQ and Avantis has started to pass the X32 (and at some point the M32 as well) down the list.
Yamaha QL, CL and PM are at par with Digico and the large Midas consoles
Soundcraft Vi series are often accepted, but mainly if that is what the venue already has installed, if hire is needed it is lower on the list.
Oldies like LS9 and M7CL are 9/10 accepted if they are what the venue has installed.
 
I doubt it, Sam. Although one of each of my current houses has one of each... (the third having an LS9, and my newest one a TF3 (or 5) that I'm trying to talk them out of keeping...
 
newest one a TF3 (or 5)

Have a client who has CL's at their main spaces. Just opened up a pre-production space for them that needed desks for rehearsals. They wanted TF's for that Yamaha consistency when they move between their preproduction spaces and their performance spaces. Tried talking them out of it but now that they have 2 TF1's and a TF5, they're trying to dump those things as quickly as possible. They....uhhhhh....get the job done, but geez is it pain trying to figure out what the console is actually doing.

Fun fact I discovered during system commissioning -- for whatever reason if you run pink noise through the Oscillator, all outputs are equal gain. If you actually run signal through the console, the aux busses are knocked down by 6dB or so for no obvious reason. Normally most people wouldn't notice this if they're using auxes for monitors, but in this case we're using them for delays to the main system because of they mix their rehearsal spaces with Qlab and some speakers outputting vocals/music/FX and others only music/FX without vocals. The 6dB is very noticeable and I had to compensate for it in the DSP.

Also had a lot of trouble with the Dante cards because we have the Dante patched through Dante Controller into the DSP. There seems to be no place in the console where you can see if an output is patched to a Tio or to a third-party device. We were able to get some more information out of the console using StageMix than you can see directly in the console, but they're just supremely half-assed consoles by Yamaha to try and avoid losing entry-level market share to A&H and Behringer. Also one wrong DIP switch on the Tio and it would reassert its patch to the console and wipe out our DSP patch. At least that issue was solvable by playing with the DIP switches.
 
Have a client who has CL's at their main spaces. Just opened up a pre-production space for them that needed desks for rehearsals. They wanted TF's for that Yamaha consistency when they move between their preproduction spaces and their performance spaces. Tried talking them out of it but now that they have 2 TF1's and a TF5, they're trying to dump those things as quickly as possible. They....uhhhhh....get the job done, but geez is it pain trying to figure out what the console is actually doing.

Fun fact I discovered during system commissioning -- for whatever reason if you run pink noise through the Oscillator, all outputs are equal gain. If you actually run signal through the console, the aux busses are knocked down by 6dB or so for no obvious reason. Normally most people wouldn't notice this if they're using auxes for monitors, but in this case we're using them for delays to the main system because of they mix their rehearsal spaces with Qlab and some speakers outputting vocals/music/FX and others only music/FX without vocals. The 6dB is very noticeable and I had to compensate for it in the DSP.

Also had a lot of trouble with the Dante cards because we have the Dante patched through Dante Controller into the DSP. There seems to be no place in the console where you can see if an output is patched to a Tio or to a third-party device. We were able to get some more information out of the console using StageMix than you can see directly in the console, but they're just supremely half-assed consoles by Yamaha to try and avoid losing entry-level market share to A&H and Behringer. Also one wrong DIP switch on the Tio and it would reassert its patch to the console and wipe out our DSP patch. At least that issue was solvable by playing with the DIP switches.
It's good to see that my appraisal of the TF series consoles was pretty much on the mark, after having read the manual. I wonder if your 6db thing could have anything to do with pan law?

If the noise generators are stereo and not correlated, that might have an effect there, no?
 
When I saw the 6dB I was convinced it was a stereo summing issue, and then their A1 and I proceeded to waste 30min going down that path. Verified the input signal chain had no pan/mono/stereo issues that could've been gakking it up. Still saw the auxes at -6dB.

Maybe Yamaha has some method to the madness but if there is some way to rectify that issue by adjusting the routing inside the console, it would be far from how any normal user would setup the console so it wouldn't have made sense to dig into that any further trying to chase down that unicorn.

The most frustrating thing isn't that our somewhat complex setup encountered some hiccups along the way -- it's that it's so wildly painful to see what the console is actually doing internally that if something isn't working as expected you have to look at every menu and signal flow under a microscope to try to infer what's actually going on.
 
When I saw the 6dB I was convinced it was a stereo summing issue, and then their A1 and I proceeded to waste 30min going down that path. Verified the input signal chain had no pan/mono/stereo issues that could've been gakking it up. Still saw the auxes at -6dB.

Maybe Yamaha has some method to the madness but if there is some way to rectify that issue by adjusting the routing inside the console, it would be far from how any normal user would setup the console so it wouldn't have made sense to dig into that any further trying to chase down that unicorn.

The most frustrating thing isn't that our somewhat complex setup encountered some hiccups along the way -- it's that it's so wildly painful to see what the console is actually doing internally that if something isn't working as expected you have to look at every menu and signal flow under a microscope to try to infer what's actually going on.
The "AUX" outputs of the M32/X32 are also -6dB relative to the XLR outputs 1-16.

Also don't use a console to do the work of a system processor. Switching mixers means you lose that control unless they are identical and have the same show file running. What happens when the Digital du jour decides to stop - how do you make the backup Mackie 1204 into a system controller?

Your complaint about the Tio and DIP switches extends to the entirety of Yamaha i/o boxes, it is not limited to the TF. Bump a switch on a RIO and tell me what happens... Also the routing view in the CL/Rio combos are not labeled; you cannot immediately see if you're making a change in Dante routing or within the desk itself. These are systemic to Yamaha regardless of model line, it seems.
 
The "AUX" outputs of the M32/X32 are also -6dB relative to the XLR outputs 1-16.

Also don't use a console to do the work of a system processor. Switching mixers means you lose that control unless they are identical and have the same show file running. What happens when the Digital du jour decides to stop - how do you make the backup Mackie 1204 into a system controller?

Your complaint about the Tio and DIP switches extends to the entirety of Yamaha i/o boxes, it is not limited to the TF. Bump a switch on a RIO and tell me what happens... Also the routing view in the CL/Rio combos are not labeled; you cannot immediately see if you're making a change in Dante routing or within the desk itself. These are systemic to Yamaha regardless of model line, it seems.

All the core system processing is in the DSP so the desks are sacrificial -- that's where I bumped the Aux's +6dB. Console setup is still a bit complex but that's by virtue of them needing to drive effectively 2 pairs of stereo outputs with the vocals subtracted out of one them and the ability to give each speaker channel a dedicated input from Qlab. In a better console you would do that with matrices and I may revisit that the next time I'm in there with their A1 for a final tweak of everything. I should actually do a thread on here someday about that DSP config and install because it's some rather insane programming I did over a 3-day period working overnight on-site so as to not interfere with their daily rehearsals. They have on-air lights around the building to show when the house mic or camera is active, floor plan selection of stage manger paging zones throughout the building, lighting and shade control, ability to video record rehearsals to a NAS drive, ability to open up a stream their stage manager's can view from phones/iPad's/laptops over the WiFi, ability to stream to Vimeo/YouTube for guest designers/choreographers to watch remotely who may be across the country early in the rehearsal process, and a bunch of other features that feel very transparent to the end users but is actually a logic gate and sequencing nightmare on the back-end to give them all the flexibility they wanted while ensuring we were conforming with the privacy/copyright requirements of USA and AEA.

And yeah -- I know about Yamaha, but at least with the CL's and QL's there's better affirmation which stage box and input is associated with a channel. The TF series is so dumbed down and intended to use their quick configs by stage box ID# that they don't have that affirmative feedback in the user interface what you're patched to. You know you're patched to a "Slot" the Dante card is in and that's about it. The TF series is just an intentionally bad console tailored toward people who don't trust Behringer and deliberately crippled to not encroach on potential QL/CL sales.
 
The "Slot" issue is, my guess, to have a slight similar patch flow as the LS9, 01V96 etc series.
I had a chat with someone when the TF series was launched, and he basic said the console was intended both as a low price competitor to the Behringer, as well as an attempt to get people with limited budget to move on from the older Yamaha consoles.

I prefer the LS9 over the TF any day though ;)
 

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