It's pretty difficult to judge a
mixer without thinking about an application honestly, as a lot of
mixer features are only valuable for specific uses. Similar to asking "what's better, a mustang or a pickup truck", well it depends...
Some consoles are great for touring concerts, others theater, TV broadcast, radio, music recording studio,
etc. For example, A Presonus StudioLive can be a great fit for small school theaters, but would be horrible in post-production sound studio.
Definitely true. One of the things people often forget with digital mixers is that while it might be possible to directly compare numbers of physical inputs and outputs, numbers of mix buses, numbers of subgroups/
mute groups/VCAs, numbers of graphic and parametric EQs and so on without considering the application, that comparison can become more complex when addressing mixers with expansion capability, flexible routing,
etc. A recent example was someone comparing two digital mixers noting that
Mixer A had direct outputs for every
channel while
Mixer B had no direct outputs. Not only is that probably not relevant unless you need those direct outputs but the reality is that
Mixer B could be configured to provide direct outputs if they were required.
Beyond that, even more difficult to compare are critical factors that do not necessarily have objective measurements or descriptors such as workflow, flexibility in configuration,
ease of use, sound quality and so on. And how do you objectively compare the tech
rider acceptance factor?
You also get into all sorts of details, for example DiGiCo mixers that support
mono or stereo channels and
mono or stereo buses. Or Midas with their SIS approach to
LCR panning. And how do you compare
network connectivity that is more generic (CobraNet, EtherSound, MADI, Dante,
etc.) with that which is more proprietary (REAC, ACE, ULTRANET and so on) as simply saying it has
network audio and even the number of channels supported does not tell you the whole story?
