Waverunr - First and foremost, welcome to Control Booth! It seems that you do exactly the type of work where the X32 will shine. Although, I do not agree about it becoming a
rider acceptable
console, either for monitors or
FOH. Back when I was touring as a BE I didn't have many specific requests, but rather what was NOT acceptable. Behringer and
Mackie were specifically stated in the
rider as UNACCEPTABLE gear. Consoles, outboard, graphic EQ ... And not necessarily because it's ALL crap, (I'll take a Behringer
Comp/
Gate over an ACP88 any day) but it's to weed out the lower end sound companies and/or venues. If they're using a Eurodesk chances are the rest of the PA is going to be on
par (or worse). If it's a Heritage 3000 or PM5D then I know the rest of the rig is going to be of decent quality as well.
So, as far as the X32 being on riders any time soon, I just don't see it happening. It certainly won't be on any of mine, even though I like the
console and plan on buying some of the new varieties once they finally start shipping.
Oh yeah, about using only the iPad at a festival... If you're dealing with riders then you'll probably have band engineers. They will require a physical
console and not be too thrilled if you
hand them an iPad. If you're already renting an SC48 you might as well just get another. Or if you must use the X32 put it on monitors. Most of the time if the band is only carrying one engineer it will be
FOH and you'll be the one mixing monitors all day.