Mixers/Consoles I need some, ahem, objective opinions, M7 vs Pro2 vs ?

So, which one should it be?

  • Midas Pro

    Votes: 6 60.0%

  • Yamaha M7

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Something else

    Votes: 4 40.0%

  • Digital sucks, stick with an analog board

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    10
  • Poll closed .
CenlaTD

CenlaTD

Member
Hey guys,

Our venue is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year and we have decided it's time for a FOH desk upgrade. We have limped along with a Yamaha 2500 for far too long and need to get with the times and go digital.

We are a roadhouse theater and are the venue for everything from symphony concerts to rappers along with the usual stageplays, musicals, etc. We, ourselves, try to produce national touring productions ranging from theater to dance to bands and so on. We want to get a board that is rider friendly yet user friendly during a live event

Recently, a local dealer demoed the Midas Pro2 in our auditorium and we were quite impressed (of course compared to what we have. . . .). However, we have one of our regular out of house engineers who doesn't want us to go with the Midas and get a Yamaha M7 instead.
 
Ha. No way in hell I would go with the M7 these days. I just bought two pro2's for my place. When its not 1am I'll write a bit more about that.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk
 
Once you learn the ins and outs of the Midas (it is not very user intuitive) it is a very powerful and great sounding console! The M7 is okay, but that's all I'll give it.
 
I run an M7 here at the high school. It works just fine for us, but based on what I have seen of the Midas, I would go that route. If I had to choose between the two, I'd go Midas.
 
DuckJordan said:
Avid Venue Profile, we have several in the area and I've yet to hear it turned down.
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This is very true. However, I personally feel we are beggining to hit the end of life time of the Profile, D-Show, and SC48. The M7 is dead, so much so that Yamaha is trying to buy them back at close to market price (http://www.yamahacommercialaudiosystems.com/cltradeup/). The advantage for the AVID stuff is everyone knows them and everyone carries a show file for them. You really need to look at who will be running the gear and who will be the system tech on the gear to decide what move you should make. If your crew is always in flux and you want to get a show up quick and not have to train people, the Venue line is the way to go. It will fill riders. It is pretty easy to get around. Everyone and their dog has mixed on it. It sounds good. You have more plugins then you know what to do with.

Now... why did I end up with Pro2's instead of buying a D-Show or Profile...

Simple, the Pro2 sounds better. We replaced our Heritage 1k and our Crest Monitor X with a Pro2 in both positions and could not be happier. The one downside we had to this desk was rider compatibility. We knew going into it that with these consoles we would have to do more training for our staff. We knew that guest engineers would need a good default show file to start with and we would have to stay close to them during the show in case they had any questions. However, we have yet to have anyone say "No, I won't use that". Even the rider that read "NO DIGITAL" took the desk. It has the Midas name on it... and it has the Midas sound. This thing sounds like no digital console you have ever heard. Most guest engineers are excited to give it a run, and they always take their show file with them and want to mix on it in the future. Really, the sound is the killer feature of the desk... and if that is important to you it is a no brainer. The dynamics on the console are unbelievable, the comps in the console sound better then the BSS comps that we had on the heritage.

There are some downsides to the desk. You are locked to the effects they give you, there is no way to add new ones. When you first get the desk there is a steep learning curve to get the thing setup. There are no default show files so you have to start from TOTAL scratch. After you get your default show file setup the desk is just as fast as any other desk out there. With the Pro2 you are also locked to a single DSP that limits the number of graphs and effects you can run. For us, that is not really and issue. FOH, we have it set to mostly effects and a few graphs and at monitors it is set in the reverse. That could be an issue if you are running a single desk setup and do a lot of monitoring. The effects processors sound good, but we did leave our D-2 and a few other processors at FOH just in case.

Personally, I like working on the Pro2 surface better then the venue stuff. It is laid out cleaner and you are not moving around as much. It is nearly impossible to get lost on the desk. Pop groups really make working with layers a breeze. The colored screens also make getting around the desk much faster.

I'm more than happy to talk more about this if you have any questions. (It is in my best interest to have more of these desks out there, less work for me!) Right now I don't think there is a better choice out there for the price. The SC48 and M7 are pretty long in the tooth. The Soundcraft stuff is good, but they don't have the rider compatibility of the Avid stuff or the sound of the Midas.

Take a look at your past riders. I have a feeling you will see the same thing we did... the guys who really want the Avid desks bring them. The guys who just want a good desk will take the Midas and have a good day.
 
What Footer said.

I would get what you want to mix on. Avid is going to be the most rider friendly right now, but there are plenty of places to rent them is someone is not carrying . The M7 is really old at this point, and never sounded good, even when it was new. I would questing the reasoning that your local guy who wants the M7 over a Midas(crotchety old may who does not want to learn something new?). Also the M7 and 5D fell off of FOH riders years ago, and come to think of it Yamaha has yet to introduce a new professional desk to replace the 5D, monitor desks are a different story though.
 
Digico has some nice offering that you may want to look at too. Find your local rep, I'm sure they will be happy to bring you a demo to use for a few days.
 
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This, demo a T version. Very user friendly and solid desks.

MikeJ said:
Digico has some nice offering that you may want to look at too. Find your local rep, I'm sure they will be happy to bring you a demo to use for a few days.
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Casting another vote for the D-Show. Easy to drive and pretty well suited to most applications. It's my personal favorite.
 
What % of shows would you say that you (or your house crew) handle the mixing duties? (Ie what % of bands/performers come in with their own engineers?)

There are a number of aspects to look at when buying a new console, you need to decide which is most important to you:

Rider Friendliness
New user learning curve
Sound quality
I/O capabilities
Personal preference

If you find that you or someone in-house ends up mixing most of your events, then fulfilling riders isn't going to be an issue. If most of your shows arrive with an engineer, it needs to be something standard. The Pro series isn't the most intuitive console right out of the gate, but if you and the house crew spend a few weeks really digging into the console, you should be able to show just about any engineer how to get through a mix. I doubt many people will scoff at the Pro2, even if they don't have a clue how to set up a mix. That's what the house engineer is for.

Now, with all that said, do NOT buy an M7. It is quickly approaching end of life. They are decent consoles for most applications, but their time is almost up.

Unfortunately, the same is true of the VENUE line. Will the Profile or even SC48 be obsolete in the next couple years? Probably not. But Avid is very close to releasing their second generation of live boards, so I'd be weary of purchasing something new right now.

Personally, I love the Pro2, I work on it fairly often, although thew Profile is my current weapon of choice. I think everyone at your venue would be happy with the Pro2, and I think they are quickly starting to gain traction over Yamaha and Avid in terms of riders. I would also look at Digico, the SD9 would be comparable to the Pro2.
 
Don't forget to consider the Yamaha CL series. We're finding a pretty universal happiness with our clients in the CL consoles we've been spec'ing and installing. It's a worthy step up from the M7 and anyone who's worked on an M7 or an LS9 will feel comfortable on a CL almost right away. The CL consoles have the added benefit of being built on Dante, which is becoming the next big digital audio transport protocol. So much so that more and more products are being built with Dante-support natively built in, such as Shure's ULX-D series.

The other big console we've been selling a number of are various flavors of the Digico SD-series, but we've been finding that the learning curve is pretty steep. It's a professional level console meant to operated by professionals that use that console on a very regular basis. You cannot have someone just walk up to it and use it without a substantial period of bumping into things and stumbling before becoming properly acquainted with it enough that they're comfortable mixing on it.
 
The CL series has its place, but its really kind of the M7 2.0, Idon't feel that it's a flagship desk(still waiting Yamaha), and is not picking up much traction In touring, so I would not expect rider friendliness any time soon. That said, it sounds slightly better than an M7(not saying a lot), Dante is useful; you can record 64 channels into protocols through one cat5 and use it with other non-Yamaha devices, and it is similar to the M7 and LS9 in layout. It also has a pretty good iPad app. AVID still has a year or two before they release an iPad app.
 
MikeJ said:
The CL series has its place, but its really kind of the M7 2.0, Idon't feel that it's a flagship desk(still waiting Yamaha), and is not picking up much traction In touring, so I would not expect rider friendliness any time soon.
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Doesn't sound like that is an issue for the OP and I haven't heard of too many rejecting the Yamaha CL series until you get up to some higher level acts and riders than are probably involved here. At this point I would definitely consider a CL3 or CL5 over a M7CL. A potential advantage in some cases is being able to convert existing M7CL and PM5D show files to work with the CL series meaning many people can use existing show files. And any of the CL series represent a pretty easy transition for the many that have used a LS9 or M7CL. But the Midas PRO2 is definitely a strong contender.

One thing that I don't believe was mentioned was whether the console upgrade may also now or in the future involve an integrated digital snake. That could have an effect on the options and recommendations.
 
museav said:
Doesn't sound like that is an issue for the OP and I haven't heard of too many rejecting the Yamaha CL series until you get up to some higher level acts and riders than are probably involved here. At this point I would definitely consider a CL3 or CL5 over a M7CL. A potential advantage in some cases is being able to convert existing M7CL and PM5D show files to work with the CL series meaning many people can use existing show files. And any of the CL series represent a pretty easy transition for the many that have used a LS9 or M7CL. But the Midas PRO2 is definitely a strong contender.

One thing that I don't believe was mentioned was whether the console upgrade may also now or in the future involve an integrated digital snake. That could have an effect on the options and recommendations.
Click to expand...

You're probably right. The CL dose have many benefits, Dante, ease of use, good iPad app(this is super useful if you end up doing monitors from foh) etc. I'm not sure if Yamaha is still doing the "CL test drive", but I'm sure demos are available.

I think for the OP, if meeting riders is a minimal need, than try each console and get what you like, and what fits you'r needs the best.

Also pretty much any new digital desk is going to need a digital snake, so the cost of installation needs to be considered as well. The cost of the snake is minimal, either a couple runs of coax or cat 5/6. Its probably worth doing both for future utilization.
 
A friend of mine is the FoH guy at the Berklee Production Center, which just went with the Yamaha CL-5, which led he and I to a long conversation that started out being about "I want one knob for each control, thankyouverymuch", but ended up being about *why* that's true, and I think it will be an issue for you as a roadhouse, a point to which you allude at least in passing:

Pretty much any audio engineer ever can walk in and drive any traditional analog board ever, with about 5 minutes time to look at the panel. That was also true of the first generation or two of digital consoles.

It's not true anymore, as digital boards have succumbed to what I call "iDrive syndrome", named after the truly miserable single-knob UI that a company as august as BMW was stupid enough to put in its cars, and which -- oddly enough -- never *quite* killed anyone that I know of.

The problem is, of course, that *now you have to sit down and study the console in advance* to know how to use it efficiently in a live performance setting.

And to whom did the benefits which are offset by that cost inure?

Well, to the manufacturers, as far as I can see. If you're a venue where there are only maybe 2 or 3 people who have to run the sound board on a regular basis, then it's maybe not as big a deal to you.

But we've taken a nearly 40 year old standardized UI, and thrown it in the trash, in favor of the Really Neat Ideas of a dozen guys at various manufacturers.

I'm not sure that's progress.
 
Senorfish said:
Definitely go with the Midas. That new M32 looks amazing if the Pro2 is too much board for you. Midas Behringer sounds clean, Yamaha not so much.
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"Fixed" that for you. Although it doesn't make much sense either way if you ask me.

Behringer and Midas all fall under the same umbrella these days. Quality control I've seen with both Midas and Behringer while under Music Group has left something to be desired, although I'm aware Behringer has been making a diligent effort to turn their brand's reputation around. If you buy a Behringer or Midas console these days, don't buy it because you thinks it's a great little console that'll last you a long time. Buy it because for the price point it's at, when it breaks, it's not much more costly to just replace it than it is to fix it. At the price point these consoles are at, they might as well be disposable after 3-5 years.
 
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