all right i'm dave rat and today let's take a look at comparing the Behringer x32 to an Allen
and Heath qu 16. um i know there's a lot of fans of both consoles the actual feature set of these
two consoles does not compare the x32 is much more complex more inputs more effects everything is um
is significantly more and it costs more as well and this Allen heath less expensive console
it rack mounts what i'm looking at here though is not the effects not the feature set but the
fundamental format in the way these consoles present information to us as engineers and um
how that of trying to look at or wonder or to ponder about how that affects the way that we mix
a lot of people really swear by Allen and his they say they sound great they love them and the
feature set is not as important to them even on the more expensive boards that have the feature
sets the x32 again a lot of fans there's a lot of bias a lot of opinions i don't have any of that
personally i like the midas heritage h3000 and the xl4 i've toured with those around the world i've
been an analog engineer for four decades i stopped mixing when things kind of went to digital i still
carried analog for a long time i love analog consoles and i'm familiar with the way the analog
presents information where things distort and the sound qualities of that digital the shift there's
two real fundamental ways that the information in metering is presented the x32 and m32 which
for the test that i'm going to do today perform exactly the same for these aspects presents it
in the digital domain the digital method where the metering is minus 60 to zero and zero being clip
and the nominal level like the zero db of an analog console that that kind of neutral level
is minus 18. on the qu16 it's set up to look and feel like an analog console it's uh just
three leds in the channels with the signal a zero and a peak and then the output meter is minus 40
to plus 12 plus and then the peak beyond that which is more how the analog consoles would be
presented two different formats let's see how they respond to see what's here when they distort and
take a look at that i have i definitely have some opinions on on the way information is presented
can have a significant impact on the way sound engineers mix especially if
they're not super familiar with stuff and the ramifications all right so we'll start with i've
got a sound tools mic switcher here with the a position is the q16 the b position is the x32 i've
got a tone generator here set at 200 200 hertz um i've got a Dorrough meter here 1db increments it's
set at plus 20. so when we see those three leds that are red in the middle the middle one is zero
db and uh it says zero but we're at plus twenty so it's actually plus twenty um and i've got an
oscilloscope here the yellow is the signal of oops is the signal of whatever console we're looking at
and the pink or red is the actual split off from the generator it's a signal being sent
all right so i'm going to crank this up and we'll take a look and we we hear that here on the little
bose speaker oh i got a little bow speaker hooked up to this analog console this analog console
is this little xenyx is set up just to control the bose speaker because it can't handle the output
and just to deal with the signal levels so we can hear what we're doing so i'm going to bring this
let's take a look at the x32 and as this comes up let's look at this input meter and we see the two
green leds down here the gain on the console on both consoles is set at plus 20. and they're at
0.3 volts input we have uh the two green leds lit which is minus 30 and when we go to plus point to
point four volts uh we get the minus 18 which is the zero db mark uh on the bit on the Allen
heath let's go ahead and crank this up until we see the first red light on the x32 there it is
and let's look at the meter and we are at plus
one on the Dorrough meter or plus 21 because 20 db up and let's give it a little more juice
and as soon as we go to plus 22 we hear this fuzz i think you can hear that i'll make
it worse i'm going to bring this down here so we're not clipping on this board no we're not
and we can see that in the yellow waveform clean clean starting to buzz there's that
distortion that clipping is not good that's a bad sound that's not the warmth of an analog preamp
that people talk about getting using analog gear for that is square waving and it just creates hash
and it's happening we see the red led there and one db higher we go into clip so red led
is lighting up just the slightest audible increment one db before square waving and sounding
bad what that tells me is if you're mixing on an x32 or an m32 which responds exactly the same
um if you see red clip lights you are not rocking like a hurricane you're rocking like an amateur
and you've got some crap sound coming out of that rig and you're not doing it right um you do not
want to see the red clip light on an x32 or m32 ever let's go ahead and take a look at the qu16
so i'm gonna just for fun i'll switch over to it while it's live and now we're on the qu16
and we can see it over here and let's go ahead and bring that up until we see red
and there we got it red so red on this x32 showed up at plus 21. on the qu16 red is showing up at
let me get my glasses here rather than showing up at the minus 4 with plus 20 so it's mine
it's plus 16. um it's showing up 5 db sooner
now let's go ahead and give it more juice now we're into the red now look at these red lights
it's not just a gentle little red light kind of buried and downplayed this is a bright red led
as bright if not the brightest thing on the console slightly brighter than the greens and
yellows and it's clipping on the channel and it's showing up on the preamp and showing up
in the eq and showing up in the column so i see four red lights showing up now and we've
still got a clean signal though and we're at plus 15 and we're still now we're at plus 20
plus 21. hope i'm starting to hear it
so right at plus 21 going into plus 22 we're starting to see that square wave so it's putting
out the same output as the x32 but it's telling us that we're in that danger zone and we're going to
be we're getting close to it sounding terrible 6 db 5 or 6 db before we get there so you can
slightly flash those leds before it sounds bad on the q16 it's a psychological thing um but
um it's maybe interesting and useful uh let's do this i'm gonna bring down the input
to 1.4 db nope i'm going to go to 1.1 volt and i'm going to bring up the output
until we get to zero and i see the led at plus 20 we got the red led
showing up on the console at plus 20 and
okay so on the output of the qu16 the red led comes up almost the same as it did on
the input of the x32 let's do the input the output of the x32 x32 bring it right up to
the red and again we're at plus 21 and this again so the output metering
of the two consoles is almost the same when the red light comes on it is just one db below square
waving and getting into that undesirable sound that we do not want to experience as an audience
member and you definitely don't want to present to the audience as a sound engineer but the input
channel has built in five or six d of a headroom before the clip light and given us a much brighter
indication that we're getting there on the Allen heath than it does in the x32 theoretically all
other things being equal sound quality and the frequency response and all the other
stuff um both consoles should sound very similar when mixed in their respective correct realms
um conversely if you're an engineer that walks up and kind of looks for a big indicator and you
don't stay out of the red and know that you need to stay 6 db below you got to be way down in the
you wanna yeah this minus six l below the clip so you wanna be in the minus
eighteen to minus twelve here will be the same as running zero to peak here
um or the peak there is like the minus six here ah all that said um i believe that this is um
one of the reasons why there's this big gap between the developers of digital consoles
and all the testing that is done i mean i've tested quite a bit of digital stuff and analog
stuff the digital stuff tests really well it has great frequency response it's smooth it's flat
it doesn't go much above 20k or 24k if at the 48k sample rate it doesn't go anything above
24k at the 96 it can't really get above 48k um the
testing of digital a being i mean you play a cd and tune the rig the cd is at 44 1.
and you tune it on analog rig you're doing a digital rig it sounds great there's no difference
but i've been to a lot of shows and it seems like since we've switched to digital and live audio the
quality of many shows is degraded and i know that digital sound i know that thinness that i hear it
when engineers are mixing on digital and i'm beginning to believe and this
is confirming and i didn't expect that coming in is that this is operator error
people are mixing on digital consoles like they do on an analog console
the Allen heath has got us halfway there it's allowing you to clip the input a bit
and not go into overload but the output is that red light is over the top um
on the x32 red lights are bad all the way around
i'll get into this more uh it's still kind of a developing thought
but i find it really interesting i think that the ergonomics the indicators and we also know
a lot of it happens with eq analog eqs you got these third octaves that are 19 inches wide with
30 knobs and you've got very little up and down for a stereo third octave and three rack spaces
and a lot of horizontal very little vertical and so it looks like you're not eq'ing very much you
convert that over to a digital screen and you've got that eq condensed horizontally with a ratio
of maybe two to one instead of five to one or four to one of height to width for fader throw
and it looks like you're eq'ing a lot more on the digital or eq'ing a lot less in the analog
that perceptive thing where we might not want to eq too much so we under eq in the digital domain
and it seems like we're not doing anything even though we see a lot going on
or maybe on a different console the ratio aspect ratio is different we feel like we are
under eq'ing and we're actually over eq those are these ergonomic aspects are
a lot more important and is often taken into account all right
i will do more with this q16 as well as bring in the Digico sd11 and maybe i'll
go farther down this rabbit hole if i can find some interesting stuff cool