Tony Peaker Messages: 443 Registered: December 2005 Location: Brisbane, Queensland, Aus...
Has No Life
I went to Melbourne yesterday to demo the Digico D1. First of all I have to say a very big thank you to Drew, Pete and Mark at Group Technologies for the opportunity and the awesome hospitality. My brain is still a little overloaded from trying to cram what would normally be two days of training into 6 hours but it was very much a worthwhile trip.
So, on to the desk.
We started the morning off going over setup options and how to access the controls etc. Being a complete geek, I had already read through the manual and had a basic understanding of the layout and how to get started so we were able to skip the extreme basics and could delve into the deeper side of the desk.
The Desk
The D1 has 16 input faders and 8 master/control group(think VCA's)/Matrix faders on six banks each, with a separate Master Fader. Bank controls are beside each block of faders with 6 banks and clear LED labelling displaying the bank names.
Above each group of 8 faders is a touchscreen with EQ controls vertically beside the screen and two rows of 8 multi function encoders and buttons below the screen. Below the EQ section is are controls for compressor and gate threshold, comp and gate in/out switches, channel HPF and LPF frequency and in/out switches.
The backlit LCD Solo button have multiple functions as set by using the LCD function switch and selecting the options displayed on the Solo button. Above these are mutes and dedicated Pan controls.
The touchscreen displays each channel above it's fader with a graphical representation of the gain, trim, phase, 48v, EQ curve, compressor gain reduction/threshold, gate gain reduction/threshold and the aux send levels/position and on/off status.
The screens are easily viewable from any angle and are bright enough that outdoor work shouldn't be a major issue.
The Racks
Each rack has input and output cards installed and configure by a Socket file to let the desk know what is installed and what you want it called. Defaults are in the format Stg-1-1 meaning Stage rack, Card 1, Input 1, but these can be changed in the sockets file to give you more logical naming conventions as needed. Signal is sent by either MADI over standard 75ohm Coax cable or by the optional Optocore fiber optic core.
Input/Output Routing and Busses
Input and output routing are quite simple. There is no "grid" layout like on other digital consoles. Instead you tap the touchscreen on the channel or bus at the top to set inputs and the bottom to set outputs.
Selecting the input section gives you a scrollable list of each input card, the effects and insertable processing channels broken into groups. For instance if your kick drum is patched to Stage rack Card 1 Input 1, then you select Stage 1-8 from the input list and it changes to the listing of that card from input 1 to 8. Select the input you want and it is patched.
If you are returning effects then you just select the Effects group and then choose your effects engine to take the feed from.
If you are patching a stereo channel, you choose the first or Left input and then hit the stereo button and it will choose the next input as right channel.
Then tap the bottom of the channel display and you get the output options. This works in much the same way as the inputs although there are less options for outputs. Here you can assign channels to route to the master bus, groups etc.
If you are assigning multiple channels sequentially on a bank you can hold the "All" key, assign the first channel in the bank and the others will all assign them in sequence. That makes it quite easy to patch a large group of inputs quickly.
In the bus outputs screen on the master screen you can assign physical outputs in the same way as routing channels to internal busses. Aux and group outputs can easily be routed to the internal effects from this screen also.
Actually using the desk
Drew patched the outputs of a Nuendo session of a live Sting show into the D1 and set me loose on the desk. Essentially I had a desk setup with outputs patched but no inputs/labels/effects etc.
From an essentially blank canvas, it took me about twenty minutes to get everything patched, labelled and sorted into the banks I wanted. And that was the very first time, with time and experience it would be even quicker. Labelling can be done with either the on screen keyboard or an attached USB keyboard.
EQing a channel was as simple as selecting it, either with the solo button, by touching the fader (which can be toggled on or off ) or by touching the channel strip on screen. Then you just grab the EQ controls and start working. The EQ section automatically expands so that you can see all the control settings and the curve. The EQ section sounds great, broad strokes of EQ are very smooth and precise, high-Q cuts don’t leave nasty artefacts. Within a few minutes I was getting the feel for the desk and operating without having to search for the appropriate knob.
Compression and gates are just as simple to use. Tap the Dynamics section and a windows pops up across the bottom of the screen showing compressor and gate controls. The top row of multi-function encoders and buttons operate the compressor and the 2nd row operates the gate. All the knobs line up with the onscreen representations so it is very quick to use and doesn’t have you hunting back and forth to find the right control.
The comps and gates also sound amazing. Since most of my work on digital boards has been on 01V’s etc I was expecting to hear that same style of compression, but on the Digico they rank right up there with quality hardware units. The compression is quite transparent and very musical. Gates also are smooth and, even with very high thresholds, do not sound choppy.
Mixing on banks took a little time to get used to, but by labelling the banks and setting them out in a logical fashion to begin with it should become second nature.
The bank switch buttons, and also the mutes for that matter, require a solid push, so that you consciously have to think about switching and the likelihood of an accidental bank switch during a show. The touchscreen also requires a firm touch that takes some getting used to but again insures against accidents.
There are 6 Effects slots available on the desk. The first of these slots is Reserved as a Reverb with around 30 different options (There is even a “Forest” verb just in case you are doing gigs in the woods I guess) . The following 5 slots can be assigned as Reverbs (with some of the higher DSP reverbs unavailable), or other effects such as delay, chorus, etc. The last two slots can also be assigned with up to 6 Graphic EQ’s each, or with Output Master processing. Any of these effects can be inserted across channels, busses or wherever you like.
In addition to these effects there are IPC’s or Insertable Processing Channels which can be inserted on channels or busses to give 6 channels of parametric EQ and compression.
The Mic Pre’s
Having read the PM5DRH thread and knowing that this problem existed on some digital desks, I paid particular attention to the preamps. With my headphones on, a channel soloed, I yanked the gain up and down trying to hear any artefacts from the gain stepping. I was glad to notice that I couldn’t pick anything out, it all seemed very smooth.
Also, the mic pre’s seem very forgiving with hot signals and you can hit them pretty hard. A noticeable difference to most desks is the complete lack of a pad switch on the channel gains. I wondered about this for a while until I noticed that the gain knob displayed on screen was indicating about 9:30 while at 0db gain. Lo and behold, turning the gain knob down further resulted in a variable pad down to -20db!
Phantom power and polarity (thank God I’ve learned to stop calling it a phase switch) are indicated on screen, with the button below the gain encoder being the polarity control. Phantom power is turned on while in the input routing section of the channel, but because we were running playback only, I neglected to check if it was displayed on the channel strip while activated.
Pro’s and Con’s
Pro’s : I like almost everything about this desk. It is extremely powerful, and yet for a first time user, enough like an analogue console that you can find your way around quite quickly.
The desk sounds great, the pre’s sound nice, the effects are well above the SPX 990 standard. The EQ and compression/gating is great, easy to use and very musical.
Con’s: It can be a complex beast to get setup for the first time, although a few templates for standard rigs will get you around that in no time.
The function of the solo buttons (Solo,solo 1 or 2 assign, build gangs, assign Aux to Fader etc) is selectable per block rather than globally which means you may have to think a little more when switching between blocks of the desk.
All in all this is a fantastic piece of gear, with a well thought out, end user oriented layout and operating procedure. The training and support from Digico is great. I think that if it weren’t for the power of Yamaha’s name in the marketplace, these desks would be on every rider, for just about every gig.
The guys from Group Technologies told me that it is estimated that there is a total of 30 man years invested in R&D/Beta Testing for any digital console. Because Digico have build on technology from the Soundtracs Recording/Post consoles, and redesigned the interface to suit live engineers, they have 10 years worth of product testing by many users that has squashed major bugs very efficiently. This means that the console is not going to have major problems out of the box, and that the upgrades will add functionality rather than fixing showstopper errors. The D5 is now on version 4 of it’s software and the D1 on version 2.
I think that about covers everything that I got a chance to play with. If you have any questions, I’ll try and dig back into the blur of that 6 hours and answer them for you. Tony Peaker
Sales Manager Specialised Stage Engineering
Andy Mizzi Messages: 21 Registered: April 2004 Location: Melbourne Australia
Here Often
Hey mate.
What did you think of it compared to the Venue? I feel the Venue stacks up pretty nicely with its features though CX has given it a fair bit of bad publicity- Andy
FOH/Monitor Engineer
Melbourne Australia - 0438281418
Tony Peaker Messages: 443 Registered: December 2005 Location: Brisbane, Queensland, Aus...
Has No Life
I think they are both great desks. However there are a few issues with the Venue that annoy me. It's a big desk with not a lot of faders. 1.9m is big for only 24 mix channel faders.
I also don't like that nothing much is displayed on the channels until you bring them up on the center channel. On the D1 you can see most of the settings on each channel at all times.
After playing on both of them I just think that the Digico is more conducive to fast work flow etc.Tony Peaker
Sales Manager Specialised Stage Engineering
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