Digital mixing consoles: manufacturers are offering powerful digital mixers for all applications, and budgets too

Post, Feb, 2003 by Marc Loftus

Kussmaul notes that while many facilities would like to see savings by investing in smaller format boards, it was only recently that these lower-cost offerings could provide the necessary feature sets for handling professional demands.

"People would try to integrate lower-cost technology when they could. But the products weren't really up to the job. Now that is turning around quite a bit"

EUPHONIX

Andrew Wild, VP of marketing communications for Euphonix (www.euphonix.com), says the company had a good second half in 2002. There are almost 125 of Euphonix's System 5 consoles in the market today, and the company is continuing to develop the 24-bit, 96 kHz board, having released the V. 2.6 upgrade back in September at AES. The latest upgrade includes improvements to the System 5's Eqs, notch filters, mix automation, control surface and display graphics.

"In the post world, there is an acceptance of the digital console as the way to go." says Wild. "It took about four of five months for [the economy] to really get on its feet But the end of the year was good for us. We sold a lot of consoles."

Euphonix is very optimistic for this coming year. System 5 user Technicolor recently upgraded its room to handle television work such as Steven Spielberg's Token series (See Post's Web site for the complete story) and Wild thinks that might be a trend. "Other [studios] are going to want to match them to be competitive. They are going to need hundreds of inputs and absolute control over their digital systems. and that's a strong points of the System 5."

Expect product news from Euphonix later this year, as part of a "short-form post plan" that ties into its work with DAW software manufacturer Steinberg (now owned by Pinnacle). Back at AES the two companies announced a strategic relationship to develop integrated professional audio products.

"The CS console was great for [short-form work]," says Wild. "It was lower cost and compact, but very powerful. The System 5 is out of that cost range."

The new release is expected to share resources between the DAW and mixing console. "You might be using some on-board effects on the DAW and you might be using some stuff on the console," he explains. "It won't necessarily be a keyboard and mouse replacement It will actually be as much or as little I/O and processing as you want"

TASCAM

At the recent NAMM show in Anaheim, TASCAM demonstrated the V.2.03 operating system update for its DM-24 digital mixer. The update is available as a free download from the company's Web site (www.tascam.com) and adds 20 new features and functions to the console. Updates include HUI emulation, new footswitch control capabilities, improved internal signal routing and direct surround panning capabilities.

The HUI emulation mode allows the DM-24 to be used as a control surface for music/audio software like Pro Tools, Digital Performer and Nuendo. Faders, pans and mutes, as well as aux sends, track arming and transport controls can all be controlled in these DAW applications via the DM-24.