I was looking at upgrading my sound board. My Midas M32 is a great board, and has treated me well. But I was running into limitations with only 32 channels, especially when I was doing multiple bands in a day.
After looking at several different boards, I decided to go with a dLive by Allen & Heath. I ended up getting a great deal on an S7000 with a 48 channel stage box.
The board allows me to do 128 inputs and 64 outputs, a huge upgrade from the M32. It also allows 16 FX processors and a way to configure groups, auxes, and matrixes in most any way I want. It gave me a ton of options that just weren’t available. It is 96khz, and has very low latency. (1.7 ms)
Probably the best thing about the board is that it just sounds so good. The mic preamps are very transparent. The EQ does what it feels like it should do. The compressors (and there are several to choose from) are much better than the M32s.
I installed an AES board and a Dante board. The AES board allows me to talk to my Danley amps digitally without converting back to analog again. (Better quality, lower latency.) I added a Dante card in the M32 as well, so now I can use the M32 as a monitor board off the same rack preamps. Or, if I want to get really fancy, I can use the 32 channels on the M32 as inputs for the dLive.
The shows I’ve done so far have been a pleasure. After a bit of a learning curve, I found navigating the board was easy and quick. The touch screens were nice and showed me tons of info. The S7000 has tons of buttons and faders, which is something I love.
I can mix from a laptop or an iPad with just the rack, either over an Ethernet cable or wirelessly.
I’m looking forward to using this board for a long time to come!