Venue SC48 or M7CL-48?

[RedRocksAudio]

I am the Director of Production for a church of about 3500, and am currently running a Yamaha DM2000. It has been fine for what we have used it for, but is a pain to train volunteers on, and even 3 engineers who know a lot about audio even think it is difficult to navigate.

Our goal is to record to Pro Tools 9 for later posting on website, etc. I love the waves plug ins as well.

So my original thought was to go in for a Venue SC48, however I recently talked to a Creative Director of a church of about 10,000 and he suggested I look into the M7CL48, because he thought it was a much easier interface, and had a better usability especially to train volunteers.

So I wanted your thoughts, who have had experience on both consoles, and get some advice! Thanks!

-Mark

[timjamesmedia]

I would strongly recommend taking a look at the Allen & Heath iLive T112 control surface with the iDR48 mix rack. Extremely user friendly and packed full of features. You can get several different optional output cards to increase the number of outputs.

[[Director] drew ryan]

The Yamaha M7CL is a bit more user friendly than the Venue. All of you input faders are on one layer. I am not overly impressed with the Centralogic section of the console. It seems a little slow as far as work flow. I am also not a huge fan of their Scene function. A little light on features.

Along with the Allen & Heath product I would look at what Digico has to offer. We have 2 of the SD8 consoles deployed at 2 of our campuses, looking at one to replace a Venue Profile at a third and will continue to place them in future campuses. They have a 24 version that basically lops of 12 of the faders. There is also the SD9 that has been doing quite well in other venues.

I like the Digico line because it seems to be the most intuitive console that I have used.

[Paris MkVI]

I cannot speak to the A&H or Venue units - haven't used them. We're not quite your size either - about 1600 on Sunday.

We did put in an MC7L in out last buildout. Our people were transitioning from conventional analog boards, so the changeover was also different for them.

Our experience with the MC7L has been a very positive one. Ultimately you are looking for a deeper solution though, planning to multi-track and postproduce, which we're not doing. But the MC7L is an easy-to train, learn and operate console.

[Gracetech]

While we are throwing consoles out there you might as well look at the Roland M480. I've mixed on all the console so far and while i didn't think any of them were complex to mix on i have users that can't even navigate around a M7-48 after 2 years with it. It all depends on the technical adpetness of your users but as far as usability all consoles mentioned so far are on equal footing. All would be a upgrade from a DM2k interface.

One of the things that you have to look out for on the SC48 is the plugin's. While it's nice to have a load of 3rd party plugin's it can also cause your console to slow down and even crash. The only digital console i've ever had hang up on me in a live situation was a digidesign and the reason was a plugin. BTW some plugin's will cause your boards latency to rise to 80ms and there is no alert to let you know it's doing that. Also keep in mind that not all Wave plugin's are compatible with the digidesign boards. They sell particular ones for Live usage. Don't let these cons keep you from this board though because it really is a great board.

After just completing an install with a Roland M480 with M48 mixers i just can't see paying the crazy amount of money everyone else wants for their limited systems. After complaining about the M400 for a couple of years Roland finally got it right with the M480 and all the features you find in the 20k+ consoles are finally in a sub 20k console. Mix that with an awesome monitoring solution like the M48 and it's just hard to go with anything else. When i came on to this install project the M7-48 had been chosen and because of my liking of the Digidesign boards i almost went with the SC48 but with a fully integrated system like the Roland i figured it's the best way to go.

If you would like to know any details with any of these boards just ask.

crt

[bobbycito]

another option to look at might be the M7CL-ES with 3 stage boxes leaving the 3 slots open on the console for addon features such as aviom if used or waves plugins http://www.waveslive.com also look to see how to setup protools with the 3rd ethersound port for recording without needing extra hardware.