quote:

---

Originally posted by jcintas

Oh forum users please help.

I am super close to purchasing a T112/idr64 for our church. Would like to buy today from Full Compass or Monday to take advantage of a free iPad promo by AMS in California that expires end of February (and I need the board now anyway). But my sound installer keeps on slamming the iLive stuff as saying I will be taking a step backwards on sound quality compared to my current GL3200 with our out-board Presonus compressors. He says LS9, M7CL, Avid, or Sound Craft is going to blow away the iLive on sound quality. His company also provides sound for big name touring groups, does installs for churches, and he mixes if the groups do not provide their own FOH guy. I have seen his setup at the local Switchfoot concert, NewsBoys and Third Day in California, so I am not completely dismissing his experience or ears.

So he says that for the one festival last year he used the T112/idr48 setup on he was able to mix on it all day and that as compressors and effects and tasks were added to the chain that the sound quality noticably degraded. That the DSP could not keep up and sound quality suffered. Of course he shared this in front of my entire sound team and worship team, so everyone at my church now thinks I am an idiot for even considering this board and not taking his advice.

I am in love with the iLive stuff. I have played with it at NAMM and Infocomm for the last 2 years. And in January spent 4 days on the NAMM floor playing with these consoles and comparing them to the SoundCraft Si2 and Vi1. These A&H boards are awesome and I think the best feature set for the money out there, plus I love how A&H keeps on updating these boards and adding new features.

I can’t find any negative sound quality reviews on the Internet. I know you forum guys probably love the boards since you own them, but why would my Sound Installer slam this board so hard? Can anyone confirm his claims? I won’t even be buying through him, so not sure his angle. He says you won’t see these rigs on professional tours and will only see them in churches operated by amateur operators.

— Jerry

---

I found myself in a similar situation months ago before making our iLive purchase…….excluding the fact that there is a “special” iPad offer from Full Compass, I see no urgency in a rush order …..

Here’s what I did, over the last year or so I mixed our shows using different digital consoles, soundcraft, digico, avid, yamahas, even stagetec….. you name it……and of course iLive…….the show I mixed on the iLive got so many fav reviews that the “brass came down and said to me ….”I guess we’re buying this one!!”ending my console shopping……in the end it was a combination of criterias that sold them to the iLive……but they decided….. with the help of my professional advice……no amount of persuasion/convincing from the A&H community or anyone else will change that……..so do yourself a favour and have fun trying all the products out there…..if you can mix you can do it on any of these consoles……the board is the tool not the job……

read or have them read the excellent review in feb pro audio review https://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/newbay/par_201102/#/50

P.S. I really really wanted the Stagetec Aurus….

RayS

R-72/iDR32/iPS10

Supplier = dealer = ‘who gives me the best margin when I sell a particular system”… I used to be in music retail and that is a pretty straight forward equation. Whatever board he doesn’t like is the one he would make the least money on.

iDR32 mixrack
MixRack for iPad & Tweak for iPhone apps
Asus N61 Laptop (x2 wireless)
Sennheiser IEM (for PFL)
Dante card (soon!)

Ray is right you need to try them. When we bought ours Full Compass arranged a demo for us. Not sure if they still can do that or not but, it is worth asking. If you were coming to South Texas I would invite you to our church so you could check our iLive out in actual use. We liked it so much at FOH we decided to replace our production room board with another iLive. I have not run into any issues of degrading sound quality.

Comparing an $8k board to a $20k board seems a little odd to me.

Tour systems have to be rider friendly and generaly contain the most asked for equipment, doesn’t mean it’s better just that it is more asked for.

112T/IDR48/IDR16

Jerry – Gotta say…I looked at Yamaha prior and found there was no feature to price comparison to the iLive setup. The supplier I purchased the speaker arrays from was also pushing the Roland line and again…no comparion to the iLive for the $$.
Why do you think you see so many small productions use the Mixrack with only a laptop to mix? Because you don’t really need a control surface IF you understand the total operation capabilites of the iLive.
I am sooo pleased to have all the signal processing,remote capabilities and versatility the Ilive brings.
You were told the “..sound quality noticably degraded””…..really? Signal procssing is only as good as the person applying the processing. No doubt the sound CAN be degraded if the signal chain of the processing is not understood by the operator. I am still learning myself ALL the capablites of the iLive and have not found a situation yet where the features were not there for the signal processing I wanted to do to improve the mix. As a volunteer (and yes some of us volunteers do work as well with signed artist),and responsible for due dilegence in purchasing equipment, I did the comparison of feature to price…..no brainer for iLive:)

iLive T112 – iDR 32
Gl2400 – iTech – SRX
SAC for All !

Congrats Matt you made the same move we did from the same board lol. The difference in sound is huge. The sound booth is so empty looking now too. Congrats to the both of you.

112T/IDR48/IDR16