Choosing an Audio Console
Why bigger may be better.

Christmas 2001 marked a major step at Fully Alive. We made a significant improvement in our audio system by upgrading from a Mackie/HOSA system to an Allen & Heath/Whirlwind system. First let me explain a bit of background.

Back in 1996 when Fully Alive began we were able to borrow a small Mackie 1604 mixer from a friend of the church. We also had access to a 75 foot 16 channel snake and a big pile of patch cords to plug stuff in. This mixer had 16 microphone inputs and 6 aux busses. Now, if you don't know, an aux bus represents a place on the mixer where you can create another mix of the inputs that is separate from the one that you are sending to your main speakers. This is essential for two main things. Creating mixes for stage monitors and creating "sends" to effects devices like reverbs and delays.

This mixer and snake served us well, for about 9 months. We soon found that between the inputs from the stage and the "local devices", tape deck, CD, and reverbs we maxed out the input capability of the little 1604 pretty fast. At the time we were running 1 monitor mix and had one effects device so the 6 aux busses were fine, (keep in mind that there are some quirkiness to how Mackie implements that "6" aux busses that makes it effectively only 4 aux busses, we may get into that later).

As we shopped we decided that we didn't want to run out of inputs again, the main thing that was keeping us from creatively expressing ourselves musically was the fact that we kept running out of input channels. It was very difficult saying to Mark Nunn, "OK, what do you want to lose if you add that?" What we came up with was a Mackie 32*8. This mixer has 32 inputs, 6 Aux busses and a thing called "Mix B", yet another place to create a fully separate stereo mix of the 32 inputs. We also bought a new 24X4 snake that was 150 feet long that allowed us to run to the front of the room via the side walls and keep from tripping people in the middle of the aisles.

Not only were we happy campers but we figured we were set for life. The Mackie 32*8 had a feature available that would allow you to add a "side car" to increase the input count by 24 channels and still retain full functionality of all your aux busses. This would be way better then just plopping down a "sub mixer" to handle additional inputs. So we're set for life right?

Well, not exactly.

Most people will tell you when purchasing a new audio console to count up all your input needs and buy something that is something like 20% larger then you currently need. This will allow for future growth.

However, as our band started to grow we began to find that it was more and more difficult to keep everyone satisfied on stage. One of the most important needs to a live musician is to be able to hear what they need. That requires stage monitors and since everyone has different needs, ideally it requires different monitor mixes.

Couple this fact with our growth and collection of various effects devices to sweeten up an acoustic guitar or electronically put the snare drum in a large reverberant room and guess what? You start to run out of Aux Busses really quick.

After much experimentation and the fact that on the Mackie 32*8 you can not use Aux 3 and 4 at the same time you use Aux 5 and 6, (if you know what I'm talking about you know how frustrating it can be) this is what we came up with.

Aux 1 Vocal Monitors
Aux 2 Band Monitors (shared among the band)
Aux 3 Vocal Reverb Send
Aux 4 Vocal Effects Send
Aux 5 Guitar Effects
Aux 6 Drum Reverb
Mix B Drummers Headphone Mix.

The real problem with this set up was that Aux 2 was the only mix for the band, there were countless occasions when one guitar player would ask me to turn something up and the keyboard player would immediately ask me to turn it down. The endearing part of it was that they would say, "Hey, could you turn the (insert item here) down in MY monitor," as though I had a separate mix just for him. Which got me to thinking, wouldn't it be great if we could have separate mixes for everyone.

As it turned out, 5 years after buying the Mackie 32*8 and setting it up and tearing it down over 500 times we decided that it was time to move up. The main lesson we learned was this. "Outputs are almost more important then Inputs." So we went shopping.

Incremental Increase verses Quantum Leap.
We had lived with 3 monitor mixes for 5 years, one for the singers, one for the band and one for the drummer, (eventually our bass player discovered that he and the drummer liked pretty much the same mix and could share that mix, each listening on their own headphones). What we needed was more aux busses.

As you look around at various consoles that are available you find that many mid size mixers have 8 aux busses, some have 10 a few have 12 and then we came across the Allen & Heath ML5000. Without trying to sound too much like an Allen & Heath advertisement the ML5000 featured either 32, 40 or 48 mono inputs, 4 Stereo inputs and no less then 16 Aux Busses. There are a few other features of note that I won't go to much into here but it also has 8 VCAs and a 12X8 Matrix mixer built into the console.

16 Aux Mixes?!?!?
What a change from 6 aux busses to 16. Most people ask, "Why would you need 16 aux busses?" Well this is what we are doing.

Fully Alive typically has a lot of singers on stage. Often times there is one soloist and a few backup singers. A soloist has different needs then the backup singers. Guess what, we can give them each their own mix. We usually have 2 guitar players, an acoustic and electric and the acoustic players always need more of them selves then most everyone else needs to hear. We have a keyboard player, bass player, percussionist (who always seems to want her mix to sound like an album mix) and a drummer (who wants so much bass guitar that it hurts my ears to listen to his mix). Count them up, that's 8 separate mixes

What about effects sends?
Remember aux busses also get used as a mix for what goes into an effects device. Count them up. We use vocal a Yamaha reverb, Lexicon vocal effects, an Aphex Aural Exciter, dedicated reverb unit for the guitars and one for the drums. That's 5 separate mixes for effect sends.

When you add it all up, that comes to 13 aux busses that got used the first day we hooked up our new console. Wouldn't it be awful to go thru all the trouble of buying a new console and out grow it the first year you had it? We wanted to avoid out growing this desk for as long as possible. At this point we have 3 aux busses to 'grow' into.

And, if you are interested… since the cost of a 24 channel side car for an ML5000 is about 5 times and the price difference between a 40 and a 48 input desk we opted for the largest frame they made, the 48 mono channel ML5000