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[Anonymous]

1) We play some tight venues and some venues where having traditional snake is displeasing to the clients. So I LOVE the digital snake (ACE).

2) I love the features of a digital board. To be fair, most digital boards have these features. But I like:
– tons of mixes, tons of DCAs
– compressor, eq, gate, on each channel…. yep now I have 32 compressor!!!!!
– 8 fx
– great for a variety of venues – we use it mostly for a rock n roll band with horns but we easily created a show for a high school musical/theatre setting.
– you can set up the mixer off line using a laptop or one the mixer itself
– ability to get a card and use digital protocols such as adat, aviom, etc.

3) What do I like particular about the iliveT over other comparable digital mixers:
– The A&H team listens to their customers and implements features that they request. I urge you to participate in the forums and put in your wish list. One of the features the ilive did not have at the time I bought it was a tap tempo but on the user defined keys. One of the later firmware versions added this feature.
– The system is modular and you can mix and match surfaces and mixracks. Furthermore you can slowly build your system: you can get a mixrack first then get a surface later.
– digital snake
– ability to control the mixrack from either the desk and/or laptop at the same time. This allows you to walk around and tweak things such as speaker delays, eq, etc. I also use a laptop to mix monitors from the stage.
– If power or a connectionis lost to the mixer, the mix rack continues to pass audio
– If power is lost to the mixrack then restored, the mixrack starts passing audio in about 10 seconds.
– The interface is much easier to use than an LS9.

4) What are some Cons

– We had a preamp was acting bad (most likey the gain control circuitry). However, A&H replaced the card. Furthermore, we did NOT have to send the mixrack back. They sent us a card and we replaced it ourselves thus saving shipping time. So although we had a problem, A&H handled it without giving us the run around. The problem was not a show stopper in our case. I have heard of LS9’s freezing up during live shows.

– If you were an early adopter of the ilive, you might have to buy a new scb (1.5ghz vs 1.0ghz) so that the latest version(1,61) works. Lucky for me, I don’t have this problem (whew). However, I do feel like early adopters are being be penalized for buying the first surfaces. To me, the early adopters took the risk and believed in the Ilive series and they should have their boards replaced by A&H without a charge. Fortunately it is my understanding that there are few of these early surfaces out there.

– The T Series does not come with a case. A&H does not offer a case to purchase.. You will need to spend around $1000 to get a high quality case custom built. We purchased one from Olympic case. We gave them the specs and the case fits like a glove.

– I would have liked to see some of the outputs on the surface be xlr instead of trs.

– Output cards are avaialble but must be purchased separately. I purchased the Mult out card for the IDR series. It is very hard to find. The part numbers for the mini multi out varies from dealer to dealer. A&H lists it as M-MMO-A on their web site. Searching for M-MMO-A on the fullcompass.com site yields no results. Fullcompass lists the part number as M-MINI-MOUT-A. The card sells for $699 which I think is overpriced. However, I had no choice but to buy it so I could do live recordings. Fullcompass was the only place I could find it. Other dealers acted like I was smoking crack when I tried to explain what I was looking for. So this card was a bit tough to purchase.

Misconceptions about the Ilive T:

The problem with the ilive T series is that people compare it to a variety of products without keeping the playing field level.

Misconception #1 – The LS9 costs less for a similar product

First of all, the T series is comparable in price to digital mixers such as the yamaha LS9. However, the ilive is much better in my opinion. One of the big advantages is that the ilive has a digial snake. Its actually ACE which has some control and audio both so its not exactly a digital snake. However, the bottom line is that you have a single piece of Cat5 cable instead of an analog snake. If you get an LS9, you need to buy a say a 32 or 48 channel snake to make it comparably equivalent to an ilive T. Further more, if you do want to use a digital snake with an LS9, you would be spending several thousand dollars more for. I personally like the ilive T series better than the ls9 plus it already has a digital snake. So the street price of the ls9 is lower than the ilive T112 with a mixrack, the T112 + mixrack is a better value.

Misconception #2 – “The Ilive T is not rider friendly. Get a PM5D”

I do not argue that the Yamaha, digidesign, etc are probably at the top or riders. I don’t think that it is fair to say that the ilive T is not rider friendly when the rider calls for PM5D. You are comparing apples to oranges. The PM5D is tens of thousands of dollars more than an ilive T.

The ilive T costs *little* bit more than an LS9.
The ilive T costs *ALOT* less than a PM5D.

You will hear these arguments to get an LS9 but remember you don’t get a digital snake.

Then you will hear people argue get a PM5d, venue, etc. instead of an ilive T when you only considering an LS9 to begin with.

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I hope a presented a fair and balanced opinion of the ilive T. All in all I am very happy with my ilive T112 and the IDR32 mixrack. The ilive T series has TONS of pros and just a few cons. There is not product that is absolutely perfect. The good thing here is that A&H respects the wishes of the users via comminucation on their forums and they are constantly improving the ilive series. I would recommend buying it!