I just got off tour yesterday where we had an X32 doing
monitor duty. I was hired to do lighting but I ended up getting thrown on
monitor setup duty, so I personally used this
console every day for (I believe) 26 shows. We purchased it from Guitar Center on day 3 or so because the band changed the setup at the last minute and the 16
channel MixWiz
monitor console just wasn't cutting it (plus it was being finicky and main outputs dying). So we got the X32 in the Gator X-Tour case, or whatever it's called. Kind of weird having a nose
cone on a case that small, but whatever... It did the job. The tour started in the Northeast, went across the Midwest, to California, then down and back to the Northeast via the Southern states. The
console traveled in a trailer behind a bus, along with a plethora of other large and heavy cases. We had three trailer blowouts and a broken frame on the trailer, just for reference of the wear and tear of the
road. The X32 is sitting in a storage
unit safe and sound, looking and acting like the first day we purchased it.
I've got to say, this
console really saved the day on this tour and was a huge step up from the MixWiz
Monitor that we were previously using. The band is 4
IEM's and 5
wedge mixes (6 if the drum sub is a separate mix). Total input count is 31, so picking what went into the MixWiz was a major compromise. The singer liked the bottom snare mic, drummer wanted his toms in his mix, a guy added a mandolin... These were all issues at the beginning of this tour, as they have been for previous tours that the MixWiz has been on.
With the
purchase of the X32 none of these compromises needed to be made. All 31 channels plus a talkback were there for the picking. No crazy cross patching, no telling a musician that they couldn't have the mix they wanted. Trumpet player wants to slam his mix, no problem;
throw a
limiter across the bus. Ringing toms in the drum box,
throw some gates on and problem solved.
The band has been doing live multitracking for years. When I first started with them (as
FOH) I was patching an HD24 into direct outs, or whatever I could find. More recently they were using the third output of the splitter and a series of preamps and interfaces and a MacBook Pro. Now it's a Firewire cable into the same laptop, and Reaper grabs the tracks. Apparently it worked well, the singer did some rough mixes on
headphones in the back lounge.
Anyway, that's about it. Without this
console's presence in the market my life would have been MUCH more difficult for the month I just spent out there in club land. It was a wonderful investment that they made, and it held up perfectly during thousands of miles of bouncing around in a trailer. There were times where water was thrown and landed on it, condensation dripped from the ceiling, it sat right next to slamming subwoofers... It did the job, sounded decent, made my life easier, and most importantly worked night after night without issues. Sorry to the naysayers but you've just been proven wrong.
