[cornelius78Participant]

Steep hi and low rolloffs on the peq, so the only frequencies left in tact are from about 400-2k, then boost 1k to make it a bit more nasal. Narrow the 400-2k band even further to heighten the effect. Probably not perfect, but it’s a start.

[cornelius78Participant]

A group is an audio path that sums whichever inputs you send to it. The summed signal can then be routed to its own output and/or another audio path (eg LR or a matrix.) On the GLD, a group also has it’s own processing (peq, geq and compressor) and can have an insert (either local digital fx rack or outboard) applied. If it’s a stereo group, the channels routed to it will be panned the way they’re panned in LR. In most cases you’d un-assign the channel from LR, assign it to a group, then assign the group to LR. In other cases you’d assign the channel to LR and to the group, but not assign the group to LR. You application will determine which is best for you. Some uses include:

Level control: route all your drums to a group and control their overall level using the group master fader, without affecting their pre/post send levels. In some cases you’d be better served using a DCA, or a combination of both. On analogue desks without VCAs, it’s an easy level control, and another gain stage.

Group eq: if you’ve got 10 mics that all need the same eq, instead of eqing them individually, you could send them all to a group and just eq the group. With ganging and copy+paste this is less of an issue with digital, but it can save a lot of time if working with analogue.

More eq+geq: if you’ve got some lavs that keep feeding back despite your efforts with the individual channel peq on the lavs, route them to a group and the group supplies another four bands of peq+a geq to help notch out feedback.

Group compression: Send all your backing vox (or horns, or guitars etc, and their fx rtns) to a group and compress the group. If one singer is singing, the compressor won’t be doing very much, but as more voices are added you get more compression, helping to “glue” them all together and keep them as a BV section, if this is the kind of sound you’re going for in your mix.

Inserts: Route all your drums to a group, and insert an FX processor (eg a reverb) over the whole drum mix. There’s a post on the blog about someone using a deq on a string group to scoop 200Hz when the strings got heavy to leave space for vocals.

Summing for personal monitoring: If you’ve got a personal monitoring system but don’t want to send 10 individual channels of drums to it (because the personal monitoring system doesn’t have enough inputs, or it’s too cumbersome for the muso to mix the 10 drum channels, all they want is a basic drum mix,) you can instead send your 10x drums to a group and then send the group to the personal monitoring system as a single channel (or 2 if it’s a stereo group.) In doing this you only take up one or two inputs on the Personal Monitoring System instead of 10, and the muso only needs to worry about adjusting the level of one or two channels instead of 10.

I’m sure others have a lot more creative ways of using them, but that’s probably enough to get started with.

By default the GLD has 2 stereo groups. It’s bus structure is flexible though, and you have 20 mix outputs to work with. You could run 20 mono (or 10 stereo) groups if you wanted. How you use them will depend on your application. As an example, (obviously my usage applies only to me, I’m sure others do it differently) if I’ve got the time to set things up properly I like to use 3x stereo groups (vox, keys, drums) and 2x mono groups (gtr, bass.) The other 12 available buses I use for floor wedges (if I’m mixing monitors from FOH,) mains and overflow.

HTH

[cornelius78Participant]

+1 dpdan. The tracks coming from the qu-drive hdd will be hitting the console just after the ADC stage: before the desk’s processing has kicked in. You can then use the Qu’s own processing and fx on these channels and create a stereo mix. The (Qu-processed) mix can then be sent to a computer running a DAW via the USB-B socket on the rear of the console for further processing. LR post-fader will come into the DAW on tracks 17-18, if you leave things set up in the default manner. P36 and P51 of the v1.4 manual explain the patching requirements.

[cornelius78Participant]

Sorry for the thread resurrection, but I just had a random thought: You could do it if you fed the main PA from a matrix. Although the mixes can’t be routed to LR, groups1-4, mix1-10, and LR can all be routed to a stereo mtx, which would allow you to use mix1-10 effectively as mono(1-4)/stereo(5-10) subgroups, the groups1-4 as 2x stereo subgroups, and LR would effectively be another stereo subgroup, you’d just have to be careful with panning (and un-assign gr1-4 from LR.)

[cornelius78Participant]

Un-assign the channels and FX returns from LR (press LR mix button, press and hold the “assign” button on the LHS of the console, and press the select button on the relevant channels so they’re no longer illuminated. Switch layers and do the same with the FX returns.)

Assign the channels to the groups (press the relevant group button, press and hold the “assign” button on the LHS of the console, and press the select buttons on the relevant channels/fx returns so they illuminate.)

Assign the group to LR (switch to the master layer, press the LR mix button, press and hold the “assign” button on the LHS of the console and press the select button on the two group masters so they illuminate.) This step my be unnecessary: I don’t remember if gr1-4 are already assigned to LR by default.

You can also do all this through the touchscreen (select channel, routing, “Audio group assign” tab,) but the above method is probably quicker for use with many channels.

[cornelius78Participant]

Not yet. There are a few threads on the forums about it. As close as you can get is to set up the mix as post fade, with the channel sends at unity (un-assign the channels from LR.). Then route the output of the mix to a pair of spare inputs, and route those inputs to LR. Of course there’s increased latency, and you have to have the spare inputs available, but it’s as close as we can get ATM.

[cornelius78Participant]

Attempting quotes…

Can you really notice the latency?

I suppose the increased latency is not such an issue if all your channels are going through the groups: they’ll all have the same processing steps in terms of the signal chain, and everything would remain coherent. It would be more of an issue if some channels were routed directly to LR and others went to the mix1-10, out, back in, then to LR. The difference in latencies here could cause problems.

At what point in time does the QU24 start nipping away at the heels of the GLD? (I don’t own a GLD)

Their similarities notwithstanding (fx from ilive, Dsnake, ME-1 compatability etc,) I think there’s such significant differences in terms of surface hardware and DSP between the GLD and Qu that that being able to route mixes 1-10 directly to LR on the Qu wouldn’t impact GLD sales. The Qu doesn’t have anywhere near as high an input count or bus count, the Qu has less fx rack space, and less of a variety of fx emulations. The Qu doesn’t have DCAs, digital scribble strips, or the encoder-per-fader, is limited to 1 ipad connection and lacks an offline editor. The increased channel\bus count and expansion options for Dante, MADI and ADAT also make the GLD more rider-friendly. I’m sure there are more features that I’ve missed, that list was just off the top of my head.

It just seems to me that being able to route mixes 1-10 directly to LR (and pan those mixes around LR if they’re mono mix1-4,) would add to the versitilty of the mixer (especially the Qu16,) with relatively little cost. The mixes already sum the channels, and they’ve already got DSP allocated for geq, peq and dyn when they’re operating as normal mix outputs, so it’s not like masses of extra DSP power is needed, it’s just a routing option. It would be a shame for someone to buy a 10-bus console, use Mix1-4 to feed wedges to drums, bass, gtr and vox, but never be able to use mix5-10 as subgroups, or vice-versa: use mixes 5-10 to feed stereo IEMs, but not be able to use mix1-4 as mono subgroups. Perhaps I should add something to the feature suggestion sub-forum.

[cornelius78Participant]

As I understand it, no (it’s slightly less flexible than a GL2400.) You can hard-pan channels in the subgroups, so you could in theory have vox in 1, guitars in 2, keys in 3 and drums in 4, however… One single fader controls the level of both sides of the subgroup: your vox and guitars will be at the same level, and your keys and drums will be at the same level, which probably isn’t ideal. Also, any processing (compression, eq, inserted fx) will apply to both sides. If you boost your vox at 6k, you’ll also get that 6k boost on the guitars. If you insert a reverb on the drums, you’ll have that same reverb on the keys. Finally, although you can pan channels between the groups, the groups themselves are hard-panned in LR: 1 and 3 are panned hard left, 2 and four are panned hard right. You’ll have your vox and keys coming out FOHL, and the guitars and drums coming out of FOHR.

I think it’s best to think of the Qu24 as having 2 stereo subgroups, and that’s it… Of course if A&H would allow us to route mixes 1-10 directly to LR, they could effectively be used as subgroups (just set them as post fader with their send levels at unity.) Or you could do this anyway and route their physical outputs back to spare inputs and then send those inputs to LR, providing you’ve got the spare inputs and can deal with the latency that comes with the extra DA-AD conversions. Not ideal, but it could work in some applications.

[cornelius78Participant]

Short version: as others have said, the DSP (and limitations of 48/30/20) are the same for both the GLD80 and GLD112. The extra faders on the 112 can be used to control whatever you want: input channels, buses, fx send and returns, DCAs, LRM and matrices. It’s just a higher assignable fader count, not a higher channel/bus count; a fader doesn’t necessarily have to control an input channel.

Long version: the GLD80 is called such because it has 80 “strips:” (4×12)+(4×8)=48+32=80.

These 80x strips can be used to control a combination of inputs (local or remote preamps, local line level, local USB 2-track, expansion card (Dante, ADAT, MADI etc,) to a maximum of 48,) bus masters, fx sends and returns, DCAs and matrices. You can assign anything to any fader you want. As with a lot of digital systems with remote stageboxes, high channel counts and assignable faders, it’s best to think of “inputs,” “channels,” and “faders,” as three separate things.

Your “inputs” are the remote preamps on the AR2412 and AR84, the local preamps on the console itself, the local RCA inputs, the local USB 2-track, and whatever you’ve got coming in via expansion card (Dante, MADI, ADAT etc.) In theory, you could have 112 “inputs” (40x remote, 8x local, 64x Dante) plugged into the desk at the same time.

If you want to process or mix those inputs in any way, you have to assign those “inputs” to “channels.” Both the GLD80 and GLD112 essentially have the same “brains” (DSP,) and can “process” up to a maximum of 44mono and 2stereo channels at a time. You might source all 48 channels from remote preamps and local IO, as is the default. You might have some channels source from the remote stage boxes, and some from the expansion card. You might do virtual y-splits so that two channels are share the same input preamp, but can have different processing applied to each (useful for sending one channel with appropriate dyn and eq to FOH, and the other with different dyn and eq to monitors.) You might not use any stageboxes at all and have all your channels sourced from a Dante card for a virtual sound check. You might be doing a small corporate gig and only be using the local IO for some wireless mics and some stereo playback from an ipod. No matter which way you organise it, you’ve got a maximum of 48 channels to process and mix at the time. The 8x stereo fx returns are counted separately from the 48, however they don’t have full processing; from memory they only have peq. If you want dynamics control on an fx return you can either route it to a bus and apply dynamics to the bus, or you can route it to a (pair of) “proper” channels, (which have full processing,) in which case it will count toward the 48 channel limit.

Now that you’ve assigned which “inputs” (48 or less) are going to be the “active channels” you’re processing, you then need to assign those channels to faders. By default ch1-48 appears on the 4x layers of the bank of 12, and the bank of 8 gets DCAs, bus masters, fx sends and returns, matrices etc, essentially dividing the board into an “inputs-on-the-left, outputs-on-the-right” sort of setup. You can re-arrange them however you want though, and assign the same channel to multiple faders (eg you could assign your money channel to fader(X) on all 4 layers, so no matter which layer you’re on, you’ve always got access to the money channel without having to switch layers,) or have some channels not assigned to any faders (eg using a DCA as a mute group and assigning it to a softkey, or having an fx return at unity and just control it using the fx send master, or vice-versa.) You can set it up whichever way is most comfortable for you to mix.

You can use different show\scene recall with the appropriate safings to quickly change the desk’s configuration to jump between different input/channel/fader routing. Also note that there’s not actually enough faders on the GDL80 to control everything all an once (44mono+2stereo+8fxsend+8fxrtn+16DCA = 78 strips, and that with no buses, mains or mtxs. You’d need another 18 faders (the GLD112 provides an extra 32, yay) if you wanted fader control of everything. Thankfully, users of the GLD80 seem to get by without having fader control of everything, probably due to anything stereo only occupying one fader, using some DCAs as mute groups and assigning them to a softkey instead of a fader, leaving either the fx send or rtn at unity and un-assigning it from the surface, ganging faders on pairs of channels/buses and un-assigning one side, not using all 48 ins, all 30x buses and all 16x DCAs etc.

The GLD112 is called such because it has 112 “strips:” (4×12)+(4×8)+(4×8) = 48+32+32=112.

As with the GLD80, these 112 strips can be used to control inputs, bus masters, fx sends and returns, DCAs, matracies and the input/channel/fader setup is the same as for the GLD80. As the GLD112’s DSP is the same as the GLD80’s, you’ve still got a maximum of 112 inputs, assigned to 48x channels, into 30x buses into 20outs.

The difference is that with the increased fader count, you now have 8 additional faders on 4 layers, (so really and additional 32 faders) to which you can assign those 48 channels/buses/DCAs etc. This means more channels/buses/DCAs etc are immediately available to you; you don’t have to jump through layers as much. The GLD112 also has an additional 4x softkeys (total of 14, as opposed to the 10 softkeys found on the GLD80,) and a sort of mini-ledge on which you could sit an ipad, or a setlist etc.

The disadvantages include initial cost, weight, space required in a truck and at the mix position etc.

AFAIK they’re the only differences: it’s only an increased assignable fader count, NOT an increase in DSP capability.

If simultaneously processing 48 channels into 30x buses into 20x outs is not enough for your application, you need to look at other desks. The iLive will do 64(+fx rtns)/32, other systems from other manufacturers will do more still.

You can assign an input/bus, (and it doesn’t have to be one of the 48 “active channels”) directly to an output (either physical or expansion card,) essentially using the IO as a routing matrix. Apart from a polarity flip on the output you wont have any sort of control over the signal if it isn’t part of the 48/30, but it can be useful in some situations, eg sending playback from a PC to another room. As long as you control the level from the PC itself (not the GLD,) and/or the other room has a level control, and you have the spare output, you can do this without burning up any of your 48/30.)

HTH

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